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THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 
WARRE B. WELLS 




Fmni a photograph by J. Russell & Sons 




/$V^ 



THE LIFE OF 

JOHN REDMOND 



BY 

WARRE B. WELLS 



AUTHOR OP **A HISTORY OF THE IRISH REBELLION," "AN 

IRISH APOLOGIA," "THE IRISH CONVENTION 

AND SINN FEIN," ETC. 




NEW XSJr YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, 1919, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©CIA5L5627 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The sources upon which I have drawn in writ- 
ing this book are, for the most part, acknowl- 
edged in the body of it. I have found the char- 
acter-study, "J onn Redmond," by his nephew, 
Mr. L. G. Redmond-Howard, a handy source of 
summaries and quotations. I wish to express 
my great indebtedness to Mr. J. M. Hone ("N. 
Marlowe"), my collaborator in earlier books, for 
his assistance in the preparation of this book. 

W. B. W. 



[v] 



INTRODUCTION 

THE BACK-GROUND OF HISTORY 

The publishers of this book have suggested 
that it should be prefaced with a brief synopsis 
of Irish history since 1798, to provide, as it were, 
a back-ground against which the life of John 
Redmond may be set. To write such a synopsis 
is a task less easy than it might appear. The 
very date selected as its starting-point is chal- 
lenging. It invites a begging of the whole "Irish 
question." Did the Rebellion of 1798, as Union- 
ists assert, justify the Act of Legislative Union 
between Ireland and Great Britain? Or was that 
Rebellion, as Nationalists reply, deliberately pro- 
voked with the object of providing a specious 
pretence of justification for the Union? It is, in 
fact, impossible that any survey of Irish history, 
however brief, should be taken up arbitrarily 
from the date of 1798 without reference to what 
went before it. 

For the purposes which we have in view here 
the political history of modern Ireland may best 
be treated from the point of view of the inter- 
action between what may be called, in the most 

[vii] 



INTRODUCTION 

general terms, constitutional and revolutionary 
movements for Irish reform ; and it is from that 
point of view that I propose to treat it in this 
Introduction. It is an interaction which may be 
traced through the whole course of modern Irish 
political history. It emerged sharply in the last 
years of John Redmond's life, with disastrous 
influence upon his own political fortunes. 

The name of John Redmond stands in the past 
generation for the constitutional movement for 
Irish self-government known as Home Rule. The 
familiar phrase implies both something more and 
something less than mere repeal of the Act of 
Union. It implies something less because the 
Irish Parliament, as it existed, immediately be- 
fore the Act of Union, was technically — but only 
technically — co-equal in sovereign power with 
the British Parliament. In 1494 "Poynyng's 
Law," enacted by Henry VII.'s Parliament at 
Drogheda, made the Irish Parliament — then only 
the Parliament of the English Pale — a mere 
shadow, entirely dependent on the English King 
and Council. It did not give the English Parlia- 
ment, however, the power of legislating for Ire- 
land. That power was finally asserted when, in 
1 71 9, quarrels between the Parliaments culminat- 
ed in the Act known as "the Sixth of George I.," 
which completely took away the independence of 

[viii] 



INTRODUCTION 

the Irish Parliament. But in 1782 this Act was 
repealed, and in the following year the Act of 
Renunciation declared that Ireland's right to be 
bound only by the laws made by the King and 
the Irish Parliament was "established forever, 
and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or 
questionable." "Grattan's Parliament," there- 
fore, during its brief existence from 1783 down 
to the Act of Union, enjoyed a technical posi- 
tion of sovereign independence — a position to 
which the Home Rule movement of our time 
made no claim. 

But on the other hand Home Rule implies 
something more than mere repeal of the Act of 
Union; for the Irish Parliament never repre- 
sented the nation, did not even represent the 
Protestant people, and was thoroughly corrupt. 
Since the Treaty of Limerick which closed the 
War of the Revolution the Government of Ire- 
land had been completely in the hands of the 
small Protestant minority, who also possessed al- 
most the whole of the land of the country and 
held all the offices of trust and emolument; and 
this "Protestant ascendancy," as it was called, 
was confirmed by the Penal Laws directed 
against the Irish Catholics. The proceedings of 
the Irish Parliament and the political history of 
the country during the eighteenth century have 

[ix] 



INTRODUCTION 

reference wholly to the Protestant colony. The 
struggles of the Irish Legislature for independ- 
ence, culminating in Grattan's Parliament of 
1782, were the struggles of the Protestants: the 
Catholics had no political existence, and could 
have no part in any of these contests. The Home 
Rule movement, of course, postulates a Parlia- 
ment elected by equal, direct, and secret suffrage, 
together with an Executive responsible to it, 
which the Executive in the days of Grattan's 
Parliament was not. 

The efforts of Grattan and Flood and their 
"Patriot Party" to secure legislative independ- 
ence, it is germane to the thesis of this Introduc- 
tion to observe, were crowned with success only 
when they were backed by the power of the Irish 
Volunteers, first formed about 1779 after the 
exploits of American Privateers off the Irish 
coasts suggested the possibility of foreign inva- 
sion. It was to this period that Mr. Redmond 
referred in his famous speech in the House of 
Commons on the outbreak of War. The "Pa- 
triot Party" secured legislative independence 
with the power of the Volunteers behind them. 
They failed to secure redress of the three out- 
standing questions without which that success 
was barren — Parliamentary reform ; the removal 
of the restrictions imposed on Irish commerce; 

M 



INTRODUCTION 

and Catholic emancipation. They failed because 
the leaders of the Volunteers shrank from chal- 
lenging a conflict with the Government. Consti- 
tutional action proved impotent to secure re- 
dress of grievances ; and the Volunteers, deserted 
by their leaders, formed democratic associations 
and drifted towards revolutionary action. There 
is a constant recurrence of such developments 
in Irish political history. 

The Rebellion of 1798 arose out of the exas- 
peration and desperation induced by the failure 
of constitutional action to relieve the numerous 
causes of distress and discontent — the penal laws 
against the Catholics; the commercial restric- 
tions imposed and maintained in England's in- 
terests which strangled Irish industry and com- 
merce; the extortionate system of "rack-rents" 
under which farmers held their land from absen- 
tee landlords. Wolfe Tone, Lord Edward Fitz- 
gerald, and its other leaders drew their inspira- 
tion largely from the French Revolution. The 
outbreak of the Rebellion was precipitated by 
the excesses of the soldiers billeted on the people 
throughout the country. It was marked on the 
insurgent side by many atrocious incidents, and 
it was suppressed by the Government with the 
utmost ferocity. 

The suppression of the Rebellion was followed 
[xi] 



INTRODUCTION 

by the passing of the Act of Union, justified by 
Pitt on the plea of "military necessity." Its 
passage through the Irish Parliament was se- 
cured by wholesale bribery and corruption. The 
proprietors of "rotten boroughs" — over 200 out 
of 300 in all — were bought with a sum aggregat- 
ing one and a quarter million pounds, which was 
added, with a supreme touch of cynicism, to the 
Irish national debt; to purchase the votes of in- 
dividual members and the favour of certain in- 
fluential outsiders, numbers of peerages were 
created; and there were besides great numbers 
of bribes in the shape of preferments, pensions, 
and direct cash. So perished the corrupt Irish 
Parliament in an orgy of corruption in the Act 
of Union, which came into force on January 1st, 
1801. The articles of Union placed all subjects 
of the United Kingdom under the same regula- 
tions as to trade and commerce ; but the promise 
of Catholic emancipation was not fulfilled. 

Apart from the futile insurrection of Emmet 
in 1803, no real movement for repeal, constitu- 
tional or revolutionary, made its appearance for 
a full generation after the Act of Union. At 
this period the country was in a deplorable state. 
The conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars was fol- 
lowed by stagnation in trade and great distress; 
the people lost all hope of relief; there were secret 

[xii] 



INTRODUCTION 

societies; and outrages were frequent. In 1805 
Grattan became a member of the United Kingdom 
Parliament, and devoted himself almost exclu- 
sively to the cause of Irish Catholic emancipa- 
tion. At his death in 1820, however, emancipa- 
tion was still withheld. 

It was ultimately achieved chiefly through the 
agency of the Catholic Association, founded in 
1823 by Daniel O'Connell, "the Liberator" (who 
had already come into prominence in Ireland as 
an advocate of emancipation), and by Richard 
Lalor Shiel. Its expenses were defrayed chiefly 
by a subscription from the people of a penny a 
week, known as "Catholic rent," and it was the 
means of establishing a free Press and creating 
a healthy public opinion. The association was 
frequently suppressed by the Government and 
as often reconstructed with great astuteness by 
O'Connell. Finally the Clare election, success- 
fully contested by O'Connell with the object of 
bringing home to the British people the absurd- 
ity of disfranchising a constituency because the 
chosen member refused to take an oath that his 
own religion was false, aroused sympathy all 
through England for the Irish Catholics. The 
Government, thoroughly alarmed by the prepara- 
tions of the Catholic Association to return Cath- 
olic members throughout Ireland, passed Catho- 

[xiii] 



INTRODUCTION 

lie emancipation in 1829 after Wellington had 
declared in the House of Lords that the alterna- 
tives were emancipation or civil war. 

O'Connell may be said to have founded in Ire- 
land the system of peaceful, persevering, popu- 
lar agitation against political grievances, keep- 
ing within the letter of the law but not within its 
spirit. "Monster meetings" were an outstanding 
feature of an agitation constitutional in aim but 
rather revolutionary in method. After the pass- 
age of emancipation O'Connell continued his agi- 
tation on the same lines for repeal. His revival 
of it in 1830 coincided with the outbreak of the 
"tithe war," in which a general movement of the 
Catholic peasantry arose against the payment of 
tithes for the upkeep of the established Protes- 
tant Church and many fatal encounters took 
place between peasants and police. The repeal 
agitation — which had existed ineffectively since 
1 8 10 — came to a head in 1840 when O'Connell 
founded the Repeal Association and organised a 
great series of "monster meetings" — at one of 
which, held at Tara, a quarter of a million peo- 
ple were estimated to be present — during the fol- 
lowing years. Finally in October, 1843, tne Gov- 
ernment "proclaimed" a "monster meeting" at 
Clontarf, near Dublin. O'Connell did not take 
up the Government's challenge and dispersed the 

[xiv] 



INTRODUCTION 

meeting; he was, nevertheless, arrested, tried, 
and convicted, but soon released on a point of 
law. 

O'Connell's action in connection with the Clon- 
tarf "monster meeting" virtually ended the Re- 
peal agitation. A number of his younger follow- 
ers, losing faith in his method, separated from 
him and formed the "Young Ireland Party," 
which, by contrast with O'Connell's "Old Ireland 
Party," an almost exclusively Catholic organisa- 
tion, aimed at embracing the whole people of Ire- 
land. One of its most brilliant, and most violent, 
members was John Mitchel, an Ulster Protestant. 
O'Connell died at Genoa on his way to Rome in 
1846, when his policy had been largely superseded 
by that of the Young Irelanders. This policy 
tended more and more towards revolutionary 
doctrines. It was given an immense stimulus by 
the great potato famine of 1846 and 1847, during 
which the people died by hundreds of thousands 
of starvation and hunger-famine while day after 
day corn enough to feed the whole country was 
exported in ship-loads, with the peasantry dying 
of hunger. In 1848 the Young Irelanders deter- 
mined to attempt revolution. The Government, 
however, was prepared. Mitchel, Smith O'Brien, 
Meagher, and the other leaders were arrested 
and sentenced to transportation; and the Young 

[XV] 



INTRODUCTION 

Ireland movement collapsed in what has been 
aptly called a "swift, tiny, and impossible appeal 
to the sword." 

The movement — essentially a "literary" move- 
ment — had for a time infused new life and en- 
ergy into Irish Nationalism; but the suppression 
of the movement following upon the exhaustion 
of the famine left it for some years at a very low 
ebb. About 1862 James Stephens founded the 
Society of the Fenian Brotherhood, a secret oath- 
bound society, with the object of bringing about 
the independence of Ireland by force of arms. 
This new movement issued in 1867 in another 
rising, which was easily suppressed, and in dyna- 
mite outrages in England and Ireland. Fenian- 
ism, however, survived the suppression of the 
rising as an active agent in Irish political life. 

The failure of the Fenian movement was not 
absolute. It was largely responsible for Glad- 
stone's attempt at reforms in Ireland, especially, 
in 1869, the disestablishment of the Irish Prot- 
estant Church, which was shown in Parliament 
to have been unable to carry out the intention for 
which it was originally established — the conver- 
sion of the Irish Catholics. The disestablishment 
of the Protestant Church in turn contributed in- 
directly to the establishment of the Home Rule 
movement, with which many prominent Protest- 

[xvi] 



INTRODUCTION 

ants associated themselves in protest against the 
action of the Imperial Parliament in connection 
with their Church. 

The term "Home Rule" was coined by Isaac 
Butt, perhaps the most gifted intellectually of the 
Irish leaders of the nineteenth century — a great 
advocate, a philosopher, a highly educated man 
of much personal charm, loose in morals, always 
in debt. He had been a Unionist and an oppo- 
nent of O'Connell's Repeal movement; while still 
a Unionist he defended the Fenian prisoners. His 
Home Rule movement, established in 1873, is im- 
portant as marking the end of the idea of simple 
Repeal. Before his time there had been some 
discussion of Federalism as an alternative to Re- 
peal. Home Rule as he conceived it seems to have 
been a sort of compromise between the two; 
while, so far as Butt was concerned, not neces- 
sarily impairing the supremacy of the Imperial 
Parliament, it did not necessarily propose a fed- 
eral system (though Butt himself personally fa- 
voured a United Kingdom federalism). The 
contrast between O'Connell and Butt is notable. 
Both professed a decided loyalty to the Empire 
together with devotion to the rights of property. 
The former, however, was an agitator constitu- 
tional in aim but scarcely in action ; the latter was 
constitutional both in aim and action. Butt, in 

[xvii] 



INTRODUCTION 

whose movement John Redmond's father played 
a part, proposed to convert English parties to 
Home Rule by reason. 

Butt's Home Rule movement — chiefly com- 
posed of gentry and professional men — is impor- 
tant as marking a stage in the evolution of Irish 
political ideas. It achieved, however, little prac- 
tical result in itself. The driving-force of eco- 
nomic discontent needed to be added to the aspira- 
tion for self-government before great progress 
was to be made. This combination was achieved 
when, in 1879, Charles Stewart Parnell, a young 
Irish squire, was elected leader of the Irish Party, 
immediately after the formation by Michael 
Davitt of the Land League, which was subse- 
quently to exercise great influence in the country 
and in Parliament. Davitt was a thorough-going 
democrat, who believed in the nationalisation of 
the land and in other theories of the Socialist 
State. The winter of the same year brought a 
great failure of crops in Ireland, leading to a ter- 
rible distress among the tenant-farmers. 

Thus everything conspired to encourage the 
success of what was called "The New Depart- 
ure," namely an alliance of the most embittered 
extremists with the left or Parnellite wing of the 
parliamentary Home Rulers. Idealists among 
the Fenians like John O'Leary who still believed 

[xviii] 



INTRODUCTION 

in open insurrection refused their support to the 
Land League, which on the other hand appealed 
to large masses of the more practical kind of 
revolutionists, especially in America. Devoy, the 
Irish-American leader, declared, however, that 
the real object of the "New Departure" was the 
recovery of national independence. This, too, 
was Parnell's view, although he preferred to bor- 
row Butt's more ambiguous phrase of Home 
Rule. 

But, whatever might be the mixed purposes of 
the combination, it was clear in 1880 that the 
Irish people had once again definitely abandoned 
arms for policy. The character of the period 
with which the subject of this book was identi- 
fied could not be better summed up than it was 
in a recent manifesto of the Irish Party (October 
nth, 1918). It is the period of "the policy which 
was laid before Ireland in 1878, under the name 
of the New Departure, put into practice under 
Parnell and Davitt, and which, under their lead- 
ership, secured the support of all that was best in 
the ranks of the physical force men of '67, and 
forged for Ireland the most formidable and ef- 
fective weapon placed in her hand throughout 
the whole of her history, set free the land of Ire- 
land, destroyed the long impregnable fortress of 
landlordism, extracted right after right from suc- 

[xix] 



INTRODUCTION 

cessive British Governments, and finally, under 
the leadership of John Redmond, removed the 
British opposition to Irish freedom and brought 
Ireland to the very threshold of final victory." 



M 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGB 

I The Leader and the Man .... 25 

II Ancestry and Youth 44 

III Early Political Life 59 

IV The Mantle of Parnell .... 78 
V Towards Home Rule 104 

VI The Home Rule Bill 134 

VII Redmond and Sinn Fein . . . . 165 

VIII Redmond and Ulster 189 

IX The War and Redmond's Choice . 215 

X A Clouded Ending 248 



[xxi] 



ILLUSTRATIONS 
John Redmond, 191 4 Frontispiece 

From a photograph by J. Russell & Sons 

PAGE 

John Redmond as Hamlet in a Students' 

Performance at Clongowes ... 52 

By permission of the Rev. Father Ryan 

John Redmond Fishing in County Wicklow 100 
At the Clongowes Centenary, 191 4 . . 180 

John Redmond with his brother William (on the 
left) and his son William Archer Redmond. 

John Redmond Reviewing National Vol- 
unteers in Phoenix Park . . . 228 



[ xxiii ] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 



THE LIFE OF 
JOHN REDMOND 

CHAPTER I 

THE LEADER AND THE MAN 

THE life-story of John Redmond is the record 
of one of the most remarkable paradoxes in 
the political history of the United Kingdom in 
modern times. No field of study, perhaps, offers 
more pitfalls than Irish politics in the making of 
broad generalisations. But, expressed briefly and 
in the most general terms, and without any of 
those necessary reserves and qualifications which 
will be given their due weight in the proper place 
in the course of this narrative, the paradox of 
John Redmond's career may be stated thus. It 
was his mission in political life to recommend to 
the British democracy by constitutional means 
the Irish demand for national self-government. 
He brought that mission to the immediate eve of 
success. He brought it to the immediate eve of 
success so far as the British democracy was con- 

[25] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

cerned; and simultaneously he found the whole 
basis of the constitutional claim largely repudi- 
ated by the Irish people. He died, a convinced 
constitutionalist, at a moment when the consti- 
tutional movement, and with it his hope of a 
peaceful settlement of the Anglo-Irish quarrel, 
seemed to be submerged in a relapse into revolu- 
tionary methods. 

To write of the life of John Redmond is neces- 
sarily, in effect, to write of the history of Irish 
politics during the past generation; and politics, 
the sum of the conflict of human passions, noble 
and ignoble, the movement of tedencies in mass 
psychology, present themselves to the historical 
student with a certain aspect of impersonality. 
But in the record of the paradox of John Red- 
mond's career, it is apparent, we are dealing es- 
sentially with the materials of a personal trag- 
edy — a personal tragedy of its kind scarcely less 
poignant than that of his predecessor in the Irish 
national leadership, Charles Stewart Parnell. One 
may very properly, therefore, preface the record 
of his public life with some study of what man- 
ner of man it was to whom this tragedy befell. 

A very brief and superficial review, at the out- 
set, of his political career, with one or two out- 
standing incidents in it, and of the political ma- 
terial with which he had to deal, will give us some 

[26] 



THE LEADER AND THE MAN 

insight into the personal character of the man. 
John Redmond was not an initiator of political 
action. He introduced no new methods, either of 
agitation at home or of strategy at Westminster, 
but endeavoured rather to perfect the system 
which he had inherited from Parnell. It was 
ever his proudest boast that he stood for the pol- 
icy of Parnell. Parnell's methods were (a) pas- 
sive resistance in Ireland against certain laws, 
particularly those relating to the land, which na- 
tional sentiment regarded as inimical, and (b) ob- 
struction in the British Parliament. The British 
Government broke the weapon of obstruction by 
altering the parliamentary rules of procedure, 
whereupon Parnell made it his chief aim to se- 
cure the balance of power at Westminster, argu- 
ing that one of the two great English parties 
would for the sake of power purchase the Irish 
vote by the offer of Home Rule. 

Mr. Redmond, as we know, did acquire the bal- 
ance of power in 19 10, with the result that the 
Liberal Party, which after its return to office by 
a huge independent majority in 1905 had ignored 
Home Rule, immediately attacked the veto of the 
House of Lords and proposed a measure of Irish 
self-government. Sinn Feiners have asserted that 
Redmond "betrayed" the policy of Parnell. They 
urge that Parnell, had he lived, would soon have 

[27] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

abandoned Westminster, and quote a speech 
which he delivered at Limerick in November, 
1880. Parnell then said that he did not believe in 
the permanence of an Irish Party at Westminster, 
for "sooner or later the influence which every 
English Government had at its command could 
sap the best of Irish parties." John Redmond did, 
however, succeed in maintaining the independ- 
ence of the Nationalist Parliamentary Party, and, 
in effect, he disproved Parnell's doubts of Irish 
stability. In 1910 — thirty years after Parnell's 
speech at Limerick — an independent Irish party 
held the British party system at its mercy and 
was able to force the Government not only to put 
Home Rule in the forefront of its programme, 
but to demand from the King himself guarantees 
against obstructive action on the part of the 
House of Lords. 

Yet when he died, seven years later, Home 
Rule, though an Act, seemed further than ever 
from being a fact. Where, then, had been Mr. 
Redmond's error of judgment? The Irish Party 
under his leadership could show a record of defi- 
nite Parliamentary achievement unequalled by 
any other minority party in the House of Com- 
mons. But Parliamentary achievement was not 
enough, and what John Redmond, like other poli- 
ticians, failed to realise was that the machine 

[28] 



THE LEADER AND THE MAN 

itself had broken down. Political democracy in 
the years 1912-1914 was an impolite fiction. Mr. 
Redmond might dominate Parliament; but what 
was the use of that when people were losing their 
habit of obedience and respect towards Parlia- 
ment? Such an event as a "loyalist" insurrec- 
tion against law like the Ulster Unionist move- 
ment would have been inconceivable in the United 
Kingdom of Parnell's days. There was more 
than a little truth in the Sinn Feiners' contention 
of the futility of Parliamentarism. But the fault 
did not lie, as they alleged, in any particular cor- 
ruption of the Irish representatives. John Red- 
mond's own position was one of the greatest hon- 
our, and he kept aloof more than any contem- 
porary politician from the intrigues of the place- 
hunters. 

Mr. Redmond almost to the end maintained 
Parnell's idea of the need of keeping Irishmen 
together even at some cost of apparent inconsist- 
ency. To different audiences he could talk dif- 
ferently. When in America, for instance, he 
would not estrange the support of the extremists 
from himself by laying stress on his own belief 
that the Irish national claim might be satisfied 
within the Empire. What he aimed at was Home 
Rule, and, if Republicans chose to assist a Home 
Rule movement, should he reject their aid? He 

[29] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

agreed with Parnell that no man may set bounds 
to the march of a nation. In England he de- 
clared that separation was impossible and unde- 
sirable. 

Was there here any real inconsistency? That 
no man may set bounds to the march of a nation 
is, in reality, a truism. Mr. Redmond's personal 
opinion was that Irishmen, once they possessed 
a wide measure of self-government, would be 
happy in their place within the Empire. Other 
Irishmen — supporters of the parliamentary 
movement too — looked on Home Rule as a step- 
ping stone towards separation. It would have 
been foolish of Mr. Redmond to have rejected the 
friendship of such Irishmen simply because he 
differed from them as to what might happen to 
an Ireland of the future. Of this, however, we 
may be certain — namely, that Mr. Redmond, once 
self-government had been established by constitu- 
tional means and agreement with England, would 
have stood apart from, or indeed firmly resisted, 
all attempts to move in the separatist direction. 
His attitude on the war is a final proof of this. 

In August, 19 14, John Redmond broke with 
the separatists once and for all. Principle and 
expediency met in a fatal clash, and he knew it 
would be no longer possible for him to work with 
men who believed that the reduction of the Brit- 

[30] 



THE LEADER AND THE MAN 

ish Empire was an Irish interest. The issue was 
forced, as it were, prematurely and in circum- 
stances that were unfavourable to Mr. Redmond. 
Could he have come to Ireland in August, 19 14, 
to be Prime Minister of a new Irish Parliament — 
his own achievement — and to conduct recruiting 
on Irish lines, the magnitude of his supremacy as 
against the separatists would not have been in 
doubt. We know how far otherwise were the cir- 
cumstances in which he declared the true faith 
which was in him. His speech in the House of 
Commons at the outbreak of the war, when he 
offered Irish support to the Government, was de- 
livered entirely on his own initiative. He acted 
then under stress of personal emotion and even — 
so we have been told — without consulting his 
principal colleague. Whoever reads the story of 
John Redmond's political career will observe that 
there were several occasions on which, for the 
sake of maintaining Irish unity, he compromised 
with his inner natural inclinations and adopted 
opinions which were not entirely his own. But 
his action in regard to the European struggle 
never varied, and, the stronger his opponents of 
the Sinn Fein party became, the stiffer grew his 
own attitude of loyalty to the British cause. 

At the same time he forcibly resented what 
seemed to him to be an inexcusable stupidity of 

[31] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

the British war-policy in Ireland. "John Red- 
mond/' says an English friend, "broke his heart 
because he tried to stand between the two forces. 
His passion for the war against Germany was 
absolutely sincere. It was partly the passion of 
a Catholic who saw a Catholic country being rav- 
aged and Catholics being slaughtered by a great 
Protestant Power. It was partly the sympathy 
of a chivalric man for a little nation. In any case 
no one who knew him could doubt that it was 
fiercely honest and passionate — so passionate that 
for the moment he was carried off his feet and 
carried out of that calm, calculating mood which 
had hitherto made him infinitely cautious in all 
his dealings with Englishmen. For once he let 
himself go. He trusted England. He showed 
what all his friends knew, that at heart he was a 
simple-minded man." 

But, this intimate observer adds, "complete as 
his confidence was in British sympathy at that 
high moment, absolute as was his trust, just so 
deep and so wrathful was his passion of resent- 
ment when England failed to respond. In Octo- 
ber, 1916, some time after the Irish Rebellion, I 
spent a long morning with him at his flat, and 
heard from his mouth, in the form of a criticism 
of the War Office in its dealings with Ireland 
since 19 14, one of the most scathing indictments 

[32] 



THE LEADER AND THE MAN 

of our rule in Ireland that, I suppose, he ever ut- 
tered. He repeated this indictment in the House 
of Commons some little time afterwards, but in 
a far more moderate form. In private life he 
gave full rein to his vehement and passionate 
anger. As I listened to his full and detailed nar- 
rative of the follies of the War Office in dealing 
with that great Irish offer to help us in the Ger- 
man War, I wondered whether in the history of 
Great Britain so great an opportunity had ever 
been so foolishly thrown away. It was all very 
well for British Ministers in the House of Com- 
mons afterwards to condemn the blunders that 
had been perpetrated. But the pity of it was that 
it was Mr. John Redmond who had to bear the 
whole penalty. For he, at that moment, stood 
between England and Ireland as the one states- 
man who took on his shoulders all the crimes and 
follies of both." x 

1 Mr. Harold Spender, Contemporary Review, April, 1918. In 
regard to other aspects of Mr. Redmond's leadership Mr. Spender 
points out very truly that he was selected as a leader of the con- 
stitutional type, subject to the advice of the Irish party and the 
national organisation. "Every act of policy was discussed by the 
Irish party. Every speaker was chosen by the party. That party 
could by its decision even impose a collective vow of silence on 
the whole body. It was the best disciplined party in the House 
of Commons, and the leader was disciplined also." This is a 
good answer to the common criticism of Redmond that he did 
not display "Parnell's strength." He had not been intended to 
do so. Mr. Hugh Law, M.P., in the Dublin Review (July, 1918) 
also lays stress on the constitutional character of his leadership. 

[33] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

John Redmond's personal life was a quiet and 
uneventful one. It was, in spite of the deeply 
felt loss of his first wife, a happy one on the 
whole. He had all the Irish domestic virtues, and 
his second marriage, like his first, was one of the 
most devoted kind. His best friends were drawn 
from among his relatives. He delighted in the 
ardent character and irrepressible humour of his 
famous brother "Willie," who pre-deceased him 
by a few months only. He and his brother Wil- 
liam had married, when they were still almost 
boys, two Australian sisters. His son, who is 
now a Captain in the Army and also Member of 
Parliament for Water ford City, was a great 
source of pride. He greatly resembles the father 
in appearance and inherits the political interest 
of the family. John Redmond had three children 
by his first marriage, none by his second. One 
daughter recently died in America. The second, 
Johanna, who is married to Mr. Max Green of 
the Irish Prisons Board, is greatly talented as 
an author. 

In early manhood John Redmond was account- 
ed handsome. To the end of his life he remained 
what the Irish call "a fine figure of a man." The 
red-haired Celt and the blond Scandinavian had 
evidently contributed largely to his making. One 
could not mistake him for anything but an Irish- 

[34] 



THE LEADER AND THE MAN 

man, and yet his was not a type of face that is 
particularly characteristic either of the East or 
West of Ireland. There was certainly nothing in 
him of the Iberian of the Western Coast, whose 
race is "Mediterranean." He had, however, the 
prominent light blue eyes and the somewhat 
florid complexion that are found commonly 
enough in the English Pale. His mouth was firm 
and his brow expressed nobility. Like his brother 
he conveyed an impression of the picturesque 
rather than of regular beauty. Yet he dressed 
according to the conventions of society, and al- 
ways with great care. His neatness was un-Irish 
and distinguished him from the majority of his 
colleagues, who rather tended to seek after a 
conspiratorial effect. He was, indeed, one of the 
most fastidious of men; and his instinctive re- 
pugnance to physical contact with persons not 
well-groomed stood in curious contrast with his 
dependence on a democratic constituency com- 
prising all sorts and conditions. 

His friends were mostly chosen from his early 
political associates, and, at the end of his life, he 
was a somewhat solitary figure. Many of his old 
comrades at arms — the men who had fought with 
him through the Parnell split — had passed away, 
and his own continued absorption in politics had 
not been favourable to the cultivation of non- 

[SS] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

professional friendships. Indeed, he denied him- 
self much for the sake of the cause. For, al- 
though not a tremendously hard worker — his at- 
titude towards details was always a rather in- 
dolent one — he was extremely regular in his hab- 
its and never acted Parnell's role of the roi 
faineant. Except for short spells in the autumn 
recesses he was never out of touch with political 
affairs; he was the most punctual of men, and, 
when in London during the Parliamentary ses- 
sions, there was hardly a night on which he dined 
outside of the House of Commons. 

Yet, as one of his younger colleagues, Mr. 
Hugh Law, has written, John Redmond "was no 
ascetic." "He was a man to whom the achieve- 
ment of the customary ambitions of men offered 
attractions. He liked good wine and the many 
things that money can buy." The leadership of 
Irish Nationalism is not such a customary ambi- 
tion. It offers no security of power and leads to 
poverty rather than to wealth. When we realise 
what were the man's proper tastes and inclina- 
tions we shall understand that the sacrifices he 
made for his country were real and not theatrical 
sacrifices. 

During the Parnell split his constant compan- 
ions in social life were Mr. Patrick O'Brien, 
member for Kilkenny city, and Mr. Edmund 

[36] 



THE LEADER AND THE MAN 

Leamy, that most charming of Nationalists. 
Death deprived Mr. Redmond of both these 
friends. At a later date he showed great appre- 
ciation of Mr. Stephen Gwynn, a scholar and man 
of letters who, although a son of one of the most 
distinguished Unionist houses in Ireland, had 
thrown in his lot with the Home Rule movement. 
Notable among his English friends were two Lib- 
eral journalists, Mr. W. M. Crook and Mr. Har- 
old Spender. He had a particular partiality, how- 
ever, for Colonials and for Americans; he was 
proud of the Australian associations that he had 
through his wife; and there was nothing that he 
liked better than to entertain visitors from the 
Dominions at his house at Aughavanagh, Co. 
Wicklow, during the Recess. He had also many 
friends among the Irish priesthood, and among 
those on whose counsel he set the highest value 
was Dr. Kelly, the Bishop of Ross, who stood by 
him (in a minority among ecclesiastics) during 
the last trying period of his political career. 
Though he never sought the society of political 
opponents he could get on well with Irish Union- 
ists and Protestants when he came across them 
in social life, and those Unionists and Protestants 
who had the pleasure of his acquaintance spoke 
always in the highest terms of his geniality and 
good manners. 

[37] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

His popularity in his own Party remained great 
to the end. "He was the ideal chairman," says 
Mr. Law, "courteous, understanding and faithful 
to the humblest of his followers." Differences of 
opinion might arise within the Party, but they 
never disturbed his sense of justice. Such differ- 
ences of opinion arose very acutely during the 
last year or two of his life, particularly during 
the sittings of the Convention. When a decisive 
division was being taken at Regent House, Mr. 
Redmond found himself opposed by one of his 
principal colleagues; the Nationalist representa- 
tion had split up into a majority and a minority 
section. It was Redmond's opinion that the ac- 
tion of the minority disposed of all hope of a 
fruitful issue to the Convention. He returned 
"heart-broken" to London. Mr. Law saw him 
there and, being aware of what had passed, spoke 
reproachfully of the minority leader. Redmond 
said at once, "He did what he thought was best 
for Ireland." Tiredness and disappointment had 
not embittered his soul. 

On the other hand he was — at least towards 
the end of his life — a little impatient of the ex- 
ternal forces which directed themselves against 
his policy. He had no personal points of contact 
with the Young Ireland of Sinn Fein. It is prob- 
ably true that there were no possible means of 

[88] 



THE LEADER AND THE MAN 

accommodation between himself and those Irish- 
men who rejected Parliamentarism as the Devil 
and asserted Irish neutrality in the war. The 
mischief was already done. To an American in- 
terviewer in 191 5 he described the Sinn Feiners 
as "an insignificant handful of pro-Germans." 
The attitude may have been a spirited one, but 
the facts were not as stated. Even before the 
war — when an accommodation might yet have 
been possible — Mr. Redmond seems to have shut 
his eyes to the critical, insurgent tendencies of the 
younger political generation. 

During the latter part of his life he resided 
chiefly in London, in a small Kensington flat. His 
house in Dublin was closed. Every year, how- 
ever, autumn saw him at Aughavanagh in Co. 
Wicklow. Aughavanagh, which used to be the 
property of the Parnells, had been built for a 
barracks at the time of the Rebellion of '98. It 
had long been disused like other buildings built 
in Ireland at the same date and for the same 
purpose, until Mr. Redmond put it into repair 
and used it as a shooting lodge. The many- 
roomed, gaunt house is set many miles from any 
railway, amid a wild scenery, on the so-called 
Military Road which traverses the highlands of 
Wicklow and finally leads into the county of Dub- 
lin. 

189] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

John Redmond loved Wicklow dearly, not less 
for the quality of its scenery and the opportuni- 
ties it offered for an open-air life than for its po- 
litical associations. Grouse shooting and fish- 
ing were his favourite sports, but he was also 
happy on a horse. His love of the country did 
not, however, manifest itself in the violent Eng- 
lish fashion. He had a. talent for idleness, and 
did not need to seek for what Havelock Ellis has 
called that "muscular auto-intoxication for the 
sake of which the Anglo-Saxon misses the finest 
moments that life can give." Nothing pleased 
him better on his holidays than to lie in the Wick- 
low heather, his face to the sun, near the murmur 
of the running water, and to summon back again 
those day dreams which, as his kindly schoolmas- 
ters thought, had been the too close companions 
of his soul. 

It has often been said that Mr. Redmond was 
by nature a conservative. The old fashioned term 
"Whig" would convey a better idea of the char- 
acter of his general political ideas. He inherited 
much of his outlook from Burke and Grattan and 
the great Anglo-Irish statesman of the eighteenth 
century. In regard to education, however, he 
was, owing to his Catholicism, quite a conserva- 
tive, and, when Mr. Balfour was Premier he 
brought his party to Westminster, against the 

[40] 



THE LEADER AND THE MAN 

opinion of radicals like T. P. O'Connor and Dav- 
itt, to support Balfourian legislation for the Eng- 
lish Church Schools. Yet one cannot give the 
name Tory to a man whose life was devoted to a 
movement which had for its main end the destruc- 
tion of that aristocratic centralised Government 
which Dublin Castle represents. Nationalism in 
Ireland inevitably bases itself upon some theory 
of political democracy and a belief in majority 
rule; Irish Unionism justifies itself upon the aris- 
tocratic principle that a propertied minority, long 
established in power, experienced in the art of 
government, may not be overborne by the mere 
weight of numbers. 

That Mr. Redmond worked and voted with the 
British Liberal party was not "solely a matter of 
high policy," as Mr. Harold Spender thinks. * 
He believed, as British Liberals believe, in polit- 
ical democracy. On the other hand, he had, like 
Burke and Grattan, a just recognition of superi- 
orities, and his ideal democracy could certainly 
have chosen for its leaders men of birth, experi- 
ence and position. He certainly hoped that the 
Irish Unionist "gentleman" would play an im- 
portant role in a self-governing Ireland. Nor 
had he any feeling for economic democracy. "His 

1 "John Redmond : an Impression." By Harold Spender, Con- 
temporary Review, April, 1918. 

[41] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ideas of land reform stopped," as Mr. Spender 
truly says, "at the point of desiring peasant pro- 
prietorship. There his feeling for his race (and, 
one may add, his religion) was reinforced by a 
strong belief that peasant proprietorship would 
give weight to the new Irish social fabric when- 
ever Home Rule was once established. For his 
idea of the future Home Rule society was by no 
means that of a restless, eager, progressive com- 
munity. He rather looked to it as a stable make- 
weight to the revolutionary tendencies of West- 
ern Europe." 

Certainly in matters outside of politics he was 
no apostle of change. His general view of life 
was that of the Irish Catholic country gentleman. 
He was a traditionalist in religion. His faith was 
simple and sincere ; and, as his nephew, Mr. Red- 
mond Howard, has observed, his peremptory and 
practical mind scarcely appreciated those subtle- 
ties of thought, those shades of meaning, those 
clashings of dogma, those contradictions between 
religion and dogma which make Catholicism a 
philosophy. It was well said by Mr. Howard 
that there was more of the Roman than the Greek 
about him. According to the same writer he was 
"typically Irish in condemnation of all breaches 
of Church discipline." His literary tastes were 
classical. He was well acquainted with the great 

[42] 



THE LEADER AND THE MAN 

English writers of the past and could recite with 
gusto the purple passages of Shakespeare and of 
Cicero. But in later years he read very little, 
partly because he lacked the leisure and partly 
because modern literature did not attract him. 

Though he might sometimes attend at the Irish 
National Theatre as a patriotic duty he found 
little or no significance in what is called the Celtic 
Renaissance. Tom Moore seemed to him to be 
the Irish National poet. He was, however, well 
disposed towards the movement for safeguarding 
the Gaelic speech, and he spoke strongly enough 
on many occasions against the Anglicisation of 
Ireland. He had a sense of the great Gaelic past, 
of the civilisation which had covered Western 
Europe with seats of learning and religious insti- 
tutions. But, unlike some modern Irishmen in 
whom this sense is highly developed, he had also 
a capacity for admiring the progressive communi- 
ties of the present day, even though they might 
be termed "Anglo-Saxon"; nor could he forget 
the part that Irish blood and brains had played in 
their development. 



[43] 



CHAPTER II 



ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 



THE name of Redmond, like the names of so 
many Irish leaders, cannot ciaim a Gaelic 
origin. It is an Anglicised form of the French 
Raymond, a name which calls to mind the Middle 
Ages and the celebrated Counts of Toulouse, com- 
baters of the Albigensian heresy. The ancestors 
attributed to the Redmonds in Ireland bore that 
name of Raymond, and the designation Le Gros. 
Raymond Le Gros landed in Wexford in 1172, a 
few months prior to Strongbow. Coming as an 
English adventurer with designs upon Irish land, 
he subsequently married the sister of Strongbow ; 
he then became the Earl of Pembroke and a vast 
proprietor of Gaelic property. The ruins of the 
Abbey in which this, the first English marriage 
in Ireland, took place, are still shown in County 
Wexford. Though Raymond acquired a consid- 
erable quantity of land by his marriage, little is 
known of his subsequent history, and whether he 
ever founded a family is uncertain. 

[44] 



ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 

O'Hara in his book on Irish Families states 
that the Redmonds of Ballaghkeene in Wexford 
had a common ancestor with the noble Geraldines 
(Dukes of Leinster) ; this family died out in 1689. 
Another well known family of the Redmonds, 
also extinct, were from Fethard. We find in 
early editions of Burke's Landed Gentry an ac- 
count of a third family of Redmonds from the 
same County of Wexford — the Redmonds of the 
Deeps. Their founder was Edward Redmond, 
a merchant who flourished in Wexford at the 
latter end of the 18th century. Edward Redmond 
married Anne Corish of Wexford — Corish is the 
name of a family which has in recent times been 
influential in Irish Nationalist politics — and had 
two sons, one of whom, John, became a wealthy 
banker in the south of Ireland. This John Red- 
mond had in turn two sons, Patrick Walter and 
John Edward. The latter, who also resided at 
the Deeps, Co. Wexford, was the first Redmond 
to enter Parliament. His elder brother, Patrick 
Walter of Pembroke House, Co. Dublin, had 
three sons, John Patrick of Ballytrent, Co. Wex- 
ford, William Archer and Walter. The second 
of these, William Archer, sometime M.P. for 
Wexford, was the father of the John and William 
Redmond of our days. William Archer Red- 
mond died in 1880, his elder brother survived him 

[45] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

for a few years, and on the latter's death, the 
Redmonds of Ballaghkeene and of Fethard being 
extinct, John Redmond, the late Irish leader, be- 
came the head of the family in Ireland. 

Constantly the children of the settler in Ire- 
land became "more Irish than the Irish them- 
selves," and history would not have to record an 
exception if it could be proved that Raymond Le 
Gros had founded a family which finally produced 
as its head a leader of the Nationalist reconquest 
of Ireland. The Irish are fond of pedigrees and 
take an interest in race origins, but Irish patriot- 
ism has long been established on a basis broad 
enough to include not the Dane and Norman only, 
but also the Cromwellian and Williamite. Em- 
met, Tone, Parnell are all English names, 
"newer" English than Redmond; and if the Red- 
monds, like the Geraldines, "began their lawless 
reign of conquerors in the van of Strongbow," 
this has been forgiven them long ago. Indeed, 
there are few Irishmen to-day who would not be 
proud to trace a connection with an ancient 
Anglo-Norman house like the Raymonds. But 
there is, as has been said, no certainty that any 
of the blood of Raymond Le Gros ran in the veins 
of John Redmond. For all we know the latter's 
family may have been purely Irish in origin ; for, 
as we must remember, Irish people in the early 

[46] 



ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 

period of English rule had perforce often to dis- 
guise their nationality by borrowing surnames 
from their conquerors. 

This can be said — and it is the chief thing — 
that Redmonds have for many centuries played 
an unstained part in the history of the County 
Wexford and South- Eastern Ireland. They have 
included landlords and peasants, rebels and offi- 
cers of the British Army, priest£ and merchants. 
We may be sure, moreover, that the Redmonds, 
whatever their origin, did not lack the Gaelic ad- 
mixture. All the early English settlers in Ire- 
land intermarried with the native population and 
its descendants. After the Reformation divisions 
became more acute and intermarriage less fre- 
quent; but some of the old English families re- 
tained the ancient faith and finally were merged 
in the Irish nation. Among these families were 
the Redmonds. 

The Redmonds through the darkest days of 
the Penal Laws adhered steadfastly to the Ro- 
man Catholic Church. One Redmond fought gal- 
lantly against Cromwell and subsequently suf- 
fered forfeiture of much of his land. Another 
joined the "Wild Geese" and became an officer 
in the Regiment of the Chevalier de Dillon in the 
Wars of Louis XIV. A third was the friend of 
Napoleon. A fourth took part in the American 

[47] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

Civil War. The Redmonds were evidently men 
of arms rather than of books, arts or policy. But 
the most popularly famous member of the family 
was a priest, namely Father John Redmond, who 
was executed after the insurrection of 1798. 
Father John had not participated in the Rising, 
being, indeed, as were most of the Redmonds, 
anti-Republican. He was, however, the friend of 
a scoundrel of the name of Lord Mount Norris 
who had a connection with the United Irishmen. 
Lord Mount Norris, in order to divert suspicion 
from himself, brought charges against the priest 
which led to the latter's execution. 

The romantic political associations of his na- 
tive country never ceased to affect John Red- 
mond's imagination. "My boyish ears had lis- 
tened," he once said, "to the tales of '98 from the 
lips of old men who had themselves witnessed 
the struggles, and I scarcely know a family which 
cannot tell of a father, or grandfather or some 
near relative who died fighting at Wexford, 
Oulart or Ross." 

Mr. William Archer Redmond married Miss 
Hoey of Co. Wicklow, an army officer's daughter, 
and his first son, John Edward Redmond, was 
born in 1857 in Dublin. The one other son of the 
marriage was the late William Redmond, M.P., 
who has "died for Ireland" in the War. Of two 

[48] 



ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 

sisters, one became a nun and the other married 
an Australian, Mr. Howard. John Redmond 
spent his earliest years at Ballytrent on the Wex- 
ford seacoast, the home of his uncle, Patrick Wal- 
ter. The family was of simple habits and lived 
the life of squireens (small squires) rather than 
that of Anglo-Irish aristocrats or landlords of 
the type familiarised by Lever. At that time in 
Ireland Protestants represented almost all that 
there was of aristocratic prestige, and Catholic 
families, however respectable their origins, did 
not easily win a proper social recognition. If 
they endeavoured to do so it might be at the cost 
of being accounted shoneens (snobs) and "Castle 
Catholics" by popular opinion. The Redmonds 
were never shoneens. Nevertheless, with their 
army and other respectable connections, they 
held themselves in good esteem, and, as we shall 
see, it was something like a shock to the family 
when its heir threw in his lot with the "rebels" of 
the Land League. 

The decade in which John Redmond was born 
was a quiet decade in Irish politics — and a cor- 
rupt one. All traces of the idealism of the young 
Ireland movement of the 'forties had seemingly 
disappeared, only seemingly, however, for in the 
'sixties Fenianism revived the doctrine of politi- 
cal self-sacrifice and physical risk. The failure 

[49] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

of the Fenians to achieve an end, coupled with 
their success in reviving the national spirit, of- 
fered those Irishmen who were at once moderate 
in opinion and personally honest an opportunity 
of having themselves heard. The elder Redmond 
was such an Irishman. After his election for 
Wexford in 1872 he attended the first Home Rule 
Conference of 1873, an d identified himself with 
the movement led by that gifted and eloquent 
Irishman, Isaac Butt (inventor of the term 
"Home Rule"). 

The Home Rulers of those days were, it must 
be understood, in no sense revolutionary, but pro- 
fessed a decided loyalty to the Empire and a de- 
votion to the rights of property. These early 
Home Rulers numbered many brilliant person- 
alities. Butt himself and George Henry Moore * 
were men of genius. The talents of the elder 
Redmond, his good sense and judgment, were 
appreciated, but did not lend themselves to dis- 
play. He was opposed to the ruder movement 
initiated by Parnell and to the Bolshevist meth- 
ods of Biggar and the Land League. The char- 
acter of the Home Rule movement changed ut- 

1 Father of George Moore the novelist and Colonel Moore of 
the National Volunteers. Colonel Moore and John Redmond 
worked together at the beginning of the present war in the en- 
deavour to raise an Irish brigade for service in France and 
Ireland. 

[50] 



ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 

terly in the later 'seventies, and when John Red- 
mond entered Parliament as a Nationalist mem- 
ber, he did a thing which the middle classes no 
longer held respectable. His young brother Wil- 
liam, then an officer in the Militia, telegraphed 
desperately on hearing the news of John's de- 
cision, "For God's sake, don't disgrace the fam- 
ily." 

It appears that John Redmond's interest in 
public affairs had been early awakened. He was 
educated at Clongowes, the celebrated Jesuit Col- 
lege at Kildare which is the principal School in 
Ireland for Irish Catholics of the middle classes. 
The atmosphere of Clongowes is not pugnaciously 
Nationalist, although many Nationalists have 
been among its pupils. 1 At that time, no doubt, 
John Redmond shared the moderate opinions of 
his father. His contemporaries were impressed 
by his maturity. "He took an interest in poli- 
tics," says Mr. Gannon of Maynooth, "and lived 
half out of school in a world of thought and ac- 
tion more befitting a man . . . His character 
was fixed early. I well remember his delight 
when Marshal MacMahon became President of 
the French Republic, and his saying to the lay- 
brother who used to look after us in the refectory. 

1 William Redmond and, in a later generation, T. M. Kettle 
were Clongownians. 

[51] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

'Hurrah! Brother, they have an Irish President 
in France/ " 

It does not seem, however, that John Redmond 
fell under the suspicion of being a prig, and he 
played games with fair success. Father Kane of 
Clongowes describes a meeting with John Red- 
mond and his father in 1870. "The father was 
a tall, majestic man with a most aristocratic face, 
a perfect portrait of which, although with youth- 
ful line and curve, was stamped upon the features 
of the son." John Redmond was recognised as 
the cleverest boy in the school, although he was 
not always at the top of his class. What he rather 
lacked was the quality of steady industry, and he 
was inclined to indulge in day-dreams. He wrote 
very good essays and attempted poetry, for which 
there was a class in Clongowes. "I have heard 
it stated since," says Father Kane, "that some 
few of the pupils then at Clongowes did not think 
that John Redmond had any real sense of poetry. 
With that criticism I most thoroughly disagree. 
Many of the English poems which he wrote for 
me were quite up to the standard of high-class 
magazines." 

John Redmond also showed a great aptitude 
for the actor's art and there is a portrait of him 
extant in the role of Hamlet. He took a leading 
part in the Debating Society of the School. Elo- 

[52] 




By Permission of the Rev. Father Ryan 



JOHN REDMOND AS HAMLET IN A STUDENTS' 
PERFORMANCE AT CLONGOWES 



ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 

cution was another subject taught at Clongowes, 
and here, as may be imagined, the young Red- 
mond had no rival. Mr. Bell, the compiler of 
Bell's Annual, was a master at Clongowes, and 
the pupil was rebellious. "On Academy Day," 
says Father Kane, "John Redmond was to de- 
claim an English poem. He appealed to me as to 
whether he was bound to carry out Mr. Bell's 
directions. I told him to obey Mr. Bell during 
the practices, but to follow out his own ideas on 
the occasion itself. The result was a great suc- 
cess, for it was not another Bell who spoke, but 
a greater elocutionist, John Redmond." 

Mr. Redmond always dwelt affectionately upon 
his school-days. As a politician he was, at times 
and in a mild way, anti-clerical, but he had never 
any criticism to pass upon the Jesuits' method of 
education. "I know I was taught here," he said 
at the Clongowes Centenary Celebrations in 19 14, 
"to accept success without arrogance and defeat 
without repining. I know I was taught here by 
precept and example the lessons of truth, chivalry 
and manliness." At the National Banquet at the 
Hotel Cecil on St. Patrick's Day, 1912, John Red- 
mond again referred to his school-days. "To the 
Jesuits," he exclaimed, "and to Clongowes I owe 
all that I have of good and all that I may have 

[53] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

been able to do, or tried at least to do, for the 
happiness and greatness of Ireland." 

John Redmond was at Clongowes from 1870 
to 1873; his brother William came to Clongowes 
in 1873 and left in 1876. From Clongowes John 
Redmond went to Trinity College, Dublin, that 
Elizabethan institution which has been character- 
ised as a stronghold of the Protestant mind in 
Ireland. There was then in Ireland no National 
University with the "suitable Catholic atmos- 
phere" such as now (largely owing to Mr. Red- 
mond's efforts) exists, and Trinity College was 
frequented but little by Catholic youth. Never- 
theless Nationalists are proud of Trinity, the 
alma mater of Burke and Grattan, which has pro- 
duced by reaction many Protestant patriots. John 
Redmond never said a bitter word of Trinity, and 
it was there indeed that he learned to appreciate 
the qualities of Protestant Ireland. We may note 
that if in his subsequent political career, he some- 
times attacked the pretensions of English rule 
in Ireland in extreme language, he was always 
moderate and conservative in his attitude 
towards those of his fellow countrymen who had 
been brought up in a faith different from his own. 

From Trinity College John Redmond proceed- 
ed, without taking a degree, to King's Inn, Dub- 
lin. He intended to follow the profession of a 

[54] 



ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 

barrister. Mr. W. M. Crook, an Irish journalist 
in London, has furnished some impressions of 
him at this time. John Redmond's main political 
preoccupation was then temperance reform, and 
he practised what he preached. "It was the cus- 
tom for students at King's Inn to dine in messes 
of six. A fixed quantity of wine per head was 
allowed to each table, and thirsty students, of 
which there were not a few, always sought dili- 
gently for totally abstaining acquaintances to join 
the mess. As I did not drink wine I found my- 
self in great demand, and on one occasion the 
same mess captured John Redmond also. As he 
never took more than half a glass of wine at din- 
ner this lucky table found itself with six bottles 
of wine for four persons — and I had the privilege 
of being introduced to John Redmond." The 
same writer describes John Redmond as a student 
and interpreter of Shakespeare greater than most 
of the professors of English literature. 

John Redmond's heart was, most likely, never 
in the law; yet, when he went to London in 1879 
to take up a post as Clerk in the House of Com- 
mons, he had not abandoned the intention of pur- 
suing the advocate's profession. Besides trying 
his hand at journalism he continued his legal 
studies. The House of Commons Clerkship, which 
his father had obtained for him, carried with it 

[55] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

a salary of £300 a year. But he must very soon 
have begun to hope that politics would be his true 
career. The House of Commons exercised at 
once a fascination upon him, and he interested 
himself particularly in the personnel of the Irish 
benches in that assembly. The star of Parnell 
was in the ascendant, and the group of "activist" 
Home Rulers proposed to carry Ireland with them 
at the next election. Mr. Redmond senior, who 
had not joined the new group, had been ailing for 
some time. John Redmond had come to London 
partly on that account — and he was there when 
his father died in the autumn of 1880. Young 
Redmond and his ambitions were well known to 
Parnell's lieutenant; and Mr. T. M. Healy, ac- 
cording to a story told by himself, proposed that 
he (John Redmond) should be Parnellite candi- 
date for the seat which Mr. Redmond senior had 
left vacant. Parnell asked, "Who is Redmond ?" 
"Why," answered Mr. Healy, "don't you know? 
The chap who hands out the programmes?" "Oh, 
that damned fellow !" said Parnell. * It was de- 
cided finally that Mr. Healy should have the 
Wexford seat ; but Redmond had not long to wait 
for another opportunity; and on the 21st Janu- 

1 Mr. Healy told this story at the Election of 1910, when as an 
Independent Nationalist he was aiming a derogatory wit at the 
leader of the official party. 

[56] 



ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 

ary, 1881, he was returned unopposed for the bor- 
ough of New Ross in his native county. 

Only twenty- four years old at the time, he had 
thirty-seven more years to live, and these were to 
be devoted wholly to the advancement of the 
Home Rule cause, at Westminster, in Ireland and 
overseas. Unlike most of the brilliant young men 
whom Parnell had gathered together in his party, 
John Redmond, if not rich, had personal means, 
and though he was subsequently called to the 
Irish Bar (1887 Michaelmas Term), he made lit- 
tle effort in the Courts, appearing only in a few 
political cases. His colleagues, many of whom 
became rich and celebrated, or both, in various 
professions, often wondered at John Redmond's 
practical abstention from all activity but that of 
politics. Such a great orator could have made — 
as Mr. Healy, no friend of his, once declared — 
£10,000 a year at the Bar. The reasons were, no 
doubt, several : in the first place there was not the 
same spur of economic necessity in his case as in 
that of men like Mr. Healy, Mr. Thomas Sexton 
and Mr. T. P. O'Connor. Secondly — and in this 
he resembled Mr. Dillon — he found in politics an 
all sufficing interest and excitement. It may be 
added, thirdly, that John Redmond, although a 
man of orderly habit and one who never neglected 

[57] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

duty, was never such a "glutton for work" as 
Mr. Healy, Mr. O'Connor and others of the 
young men whom Parnell trained to do his bid- 
ding. 



158] 



CHAPTER III 

EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 

JOHN REDMOND had at least one experi- 
ence in Irish politics before becoming a mem- 
ber of the Irish Party. This was at Enniscorthy 
in Co. Wexford, in 1880. Parnell had just re- 
turned from an important tour in America. 
While there he had met leaders of the Clan-na- 
Gael and founded the American Land League. 
His objective had been, to quote his biographer, 
"the union of all Irishmen, not only in Ireland, but 
all over the world against England ;" nevertheless, 
he had not succeeded completely in conciliating 
every representative of advanced Nationalism, 
as there were still large numbers of believers in 
the methods of open physical force as contrasted 
with parliamentary obstruction, the boycott and 
the semi-constitutional methods of the land strug- 
gle. Parnell had nominated Mr. Barry and Mr. 
Byrne his candidates at the Enniscorthy election, 
and with John Redmond went south to speak for 
them. They were opposed by the priests on the 

[59] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

one side and the Fenians on the other, were re- 
fused a hearing, and attacked by a mob, Mr. Red- 
mond being knocked down and cut in the face. 
Parnell smiled at the mishap of his young sup- 
porter. "Well," said he, "you have shed blood 
for me at all events." 

The incident, as reported in Mr. Redmond's 
own words, is interesting as showing how com- 
pletely he had fallen under the fascinating spell 
of the enigmatic Parnell. It is interesting, too, 
from the point of view of the moralist who sur- 
veys impartially the repetitions of Irish history. 
Most of the members of Parnell's Parliamentary 
Party, including Parnell himself, in those days 
were extremists in the sense that they sym- 
pathised with the Fenian demand for complete 
separation from England. "None of us," said 
Parnell at Rochester, U. S. A., "will rest until we 
have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland 
bound to England." The question at issue in 
Enniscorthy was one of method rather than of 
aim. Many of the fighting Nationalists of the 
country, though they admired and respected Par- 
nell, and believed that he was genuinely a sep- 
aratist, still asserted the futility of the Parlia- 
mentary action which he recommended. Par- 
nell, as we know, finally converted the mass of 
the Irish people, and almost all the fighting Na- 

[60] 



EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 

tionalists with them, to his own policy, and for a 
space of, thirty years or more, none save the 
wilder idealists and individualists objected to the 
employment of the Parliamentary weapon. In 
that time Mr. Redmond had succeeded Parnell 
as Irish leader. We know how, after a long period 
of almost unquestioned authority, he found him- 
self, in the last two years of his life, opposed by 
those same forces, resurgent, which had drawn 
blood from him on the occasion of his first ap- 
pearance on a public platform. Between 19 14 
and 19 18 Irish fighting Nationalism repudiated 
Parliamentarism and returned to the standpoint 
of 1879. l 

I have elsewhere dwelt upon the points of like- 
ness and dissimilarity between Redmond and 
Parnell. It may, however, be well to say once 
more that Redmond never shared Parnell's curi- 
ous but deep seated contempt for English insti- 
tutions, and English ways and the English mind. 2 
Mr. Redmond's gradual development of opinion 
in an Imperialist direction was inevitable ; indeed 

1 It is true, of course, that the Redmond of 1914 was a much 
more moderate man than the Redmond of the Enniscorthy meet- 
ing, and that the great Sinn Fein revolt was due not merely to 
disillusion in regard to parliamentary action, but to the fact 
that Mr. Redmond had led, or was charged with leading, the 
Irish Parliamentary party upon a too conciliatory path. 

" "He acted like a foreigner," Sir Charles Dilke said of Parnell. 

[61] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

the fact is that from the first he contemplated the 
spectacle of Anglo-Saxon civilisation with a sen- 
timent akin to awe. During the early years of 
the Parnellite movement, however — and at other 
periods too — the opinions which he expressed 
more than once with regard to the relations be- 
tween Ireland and England were virtually those 
of a separatist of Parnell's type; nor did he ever 
advocate a return of the Irish party to the wholly 
loyalist position occupied by Isaac Butt in the 
'seventies. There was, in practice, no shadow of 
disagreement between Parnell and his able young 
lieutenant. 

Moreover, in one important sense Mr. Red- 
mond's general standpoint in politics was nearer 
to Parnell's than the standpoint of Mr. John Dil- 
lon, Michael Davitt and several other colleagues. 
Like Parnell, Mr. Redmond scarcely shared the 
social revolutionary spirit which inspired much 
of the agitation of the Land League. This is not 
to say that he did not recognise and feel for the 
misery of the small Irish tenant farmer, or that 
he did not desire the establishment of a peasant 
proprietary with, to that extent, the downfall of 
the landlords in Ireland. But he was not in his 
element in what took on, in effect, the character 
of a social revolution. He was not a democratic 
leveller like Davitt. Had Ireland been a self- 

[62] 



EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 

governing country in the early 'eighties, and Mr. 
Redmond Prime Minister, we may be sure that 
he would have proposed a reform of the land 
system ; equally sure, however, that he would have 
discouraged, taken action against, many of the 
methods adopted by the agrarian agitators. It 
may be remarked that Michael Davitt, who was 
the true father of the Land League, always sus- 
pected Mr. Redmond of being a reactionary on 
the economic and social side — not, of course, on 
the political. His views on social and economic 
questions as they affected Ireland were indeed 
rather those of an English liberal than of an 
Irish revolutionary. When men like Parnell and 
Redmond identified themselves with radical en- 
terprises like the Land League it was partly for 
the purpose of maintaining a national unity of 
means and ends, and partly because such enter- 
prises served to intimidate British statesmen and 
made Ireland difficult for them to govern, thus 
improving the prospects of Home Rule. * 

1 John Devoy, the Clan-na-Gael leader, offered in 1878 to sup- 
port Parnell on condition that for the Federal demand of Isaac 
Butt should be substituted a general declaration in favour of 
Irish self-government. The condition was accepted by the par- 
liamentary party. Parnell was, at least at first, a revolutionist 
working with constitutional weapons. A United Ireland was 
Parnell's sine qua non, and hence he refused to quarrel either 
with the neo-Fenians or the extremist agrarian agitators. Barry 
O'Brien, "Life of Parnell." 

163] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

Mr. Redmond's first experience as a member 
of the House of Commons was as exciting as his 
first experience on an Irish platform. At the 
very moment of his election a great Parliament- 
ary fight was in progress. The occasion was the 
passage of Gladstone's Coercion Bill, which was 
being sternly resisted by some twenty Parnell- 
ites. Mr. Redmond dashed across from Wexford 
to do his share, and arrived weary and travel- 
stained at Westminster. Parnell had been pur- 
suing the policy of obstruction, and the House, 
after a continuous sitting of 24 hours, was in the 
worst of tempers. Nine weeks altogether had 
been spent on the Bill; a nine weeks' coercion 
struggle which as Mr. T. P. O'Connor afterwards 
said made the Irish Party, and thereby gave 
unity, strength, cohesion to the great struggle 
for the restoration of national rights. 

When Redmond arrived, Parnell himself was 
speaking in face of a hundred turbulent and 
noisy Englishmen. Never had Redmond been 
more impressed by that pale-featured, calm aris- 
tocrat. Then suddenly the end came. Mr. Brand, 
the speaker, whose business it was to look after 
the rules of the House and see that members ob- 
served them, acted with the courage of despair. 
He broke the rules himself by announcing that 
the debate was at an end. Whereupon Redmond, 

[64] 



EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 

who was watching the proceedings from behind 
the Bar, saw all his future colleagues file out of 
the Chamber in protest. They were back the next 
day, when Mr. Redmond took his seat and the 
oath. Mr. Gladstone rose to deal with the state 
of Irish affairs. Parnell objected, and the speaker 
overruled the objection. The Irish leader ob- 
jected a second time, and was named for disre- 
garding the authority of the Speaker. Mr. Glad- 
stone moved Parnell's suspension. The Irish re- 
fused to take part in the division, and for this re- 
fusal were turned out of the House of Commons, 
addressing the Speaker as they went each in turn. 
Mr. Redmond was proud of the unique experi- 
ence. "I took my seat," he said, "made my 
maiden speech, and was expelled by force, all on 
the same day." 

Presently, Mr. Redmond, after having taken 
his full share in the movement of opposition to 
the Government, appeared in the character of a 
constructive statesman. Events were moving in 
the direction of a reconciliation between the Irish 
and Liberals, and the Government seemed ready 
to acknowledge that coercion had failed. Par- 
nell, who had been imprisoned, was released, and 
there was an understanding that the Land Act 
of 1881 would be given a fair trial by the League. 
At the same time Mr. Redmond introduced a new 

[65] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

Land Bill on behalf of the Party, which proposed 
amendments of the 1881 Act in favour of the 
tenants ; and Gladstone replied to his speech with 
a promise of concession. The hopes of moderate 
men were, however, dashed to the ground by the 
political murder (May, 1882) of Mr. Burke and 
Lord Frederick Cavendish; and although no re- 
sponsibility for the terrible deed in Phoenix Park 
could be attached to Mr. Parnell, the Government 
had again to resort to coercion. "The Times/* 
wrote Mr. T. P. O'Connor, "suggested that the 
Irish population of England, unarmed and inno- 
cent, should be massacred for a crime which they 
abhorred, and that the Irish political leaders 
should be made responsible, for a catastrophe 
which had dashed all their hopes." 

The same newspaper charged Mr. Redmond 
with having approved of the murder of Lord 
Frederick Cavendish. The misunderstanding 
arose as follows : 

"I was at Manchester (to quote Mr. Redmond's 
own account) on the night of the Phoenix Park 
murder, and about to address a meeting, when an 
incomplete account of the affair was thrust into 
my hand ... I went to the police station to 
make enquiries, but they would not tell me any- 
thing. I made a speech condemning the murder 
of Cavendish, and saying that the Government 

I 66 I 



EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 

were the real cause of the crime. The Times 
reported my speech with the comment that I said 
nothing about Burke. Parnell spoke to me on 
the subject. I told him that I did not know that 
Burke had been killed when I made the speech. 
'Then write to The Times and say so/ he re- 
plied. I wrote to The Times, but they didn't pub- 
lish the letter." 

Mr. Redmond at this time was one of the Irish 
Party Whips, and his suavity and excellent man- 
ner stood him in good stead in these capacities. 
He was not a personal favourite with the leader ; 
but Parnell's favourites were few — John Red- 
mond's brother, William, was among them. The 
organisers of the movement, however, appreci- 
ated Mr. Redmond's good sense and caution, and 
gave him plenty of work as a speaker on English 
platforms. With his other colleagues Mr. Red- 
mond was popular, although one of them after- 
wards said — it was during the "split" in the 
Party — that he had always been a "cold-hearted 
young gentleman." His more gentle upbringing 
may have kept him aloof from many of his col- 
leagues. 

In the winter of 1882 Mr. Redmond went to 
Australia and America, at the request of Par- 
nell, in order to collect funds for the Land 
League. The unpopularity of the Irish, due to 

[67] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

the Phoenix Park murders, had spread to the 
British colonies, and the young Nationalist emis- 
sary at first received a chilling reception from the 
Australian public. Sir Henry Parkes, the Prime 
Minister, proposed that he should be expelled, 
and all the respectable people who had promised 
to support the cause kept away from the meet- 
ings. Even the priests, except some Jesuits, who 
were friendly to an old Clongowes boy, kept 
away. However, the Irish workingmen stood 
by Mr. Redmond and "kept him going until tele- 
grams arrived exculpating the Parliamentary 
party." Ultimately, having collected £15,000, he 
proceeded to America, where he was received 
with open arms by the Fenians. "Without the 
Fenians," he afterwards told Mr. Barry O'Brien, 
"we could have done nothing." There was a 
great meeting at the Opera House, Chicago, at 
which Boyle O'Reilly, an exiled patriot and revo- 
lutionist, took the chair. "It was a grand sight. 
It was grand to see the Irish united as they were 
then. I was escorted to the meeting by the Gov- 
ernor and the Mayor, and the streets were lined 
with soldiers who presented arms as we passed." 1 
Mr. Redmond's tour lasted over two years. He 
was accompanied on the Australian part of it 
by his brother, William Redmond, who had now 

1 Barry O'Brien, "Life of Parnell." 
[68] 



EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 

overcome his social prejudices and become one of 
the keenest adherents of the Parnellite movement. 
John and William both married before their re- 
turn to Ireland. The meeting with their future 
wives took place at the house of Mr. Michael 
Dalton, of Sidney. John Redmond married the 
daughter, and William Redmond the niece, of 
Mr. Dalton. The unions were very happy ones. 1 
On his return home, John Redmond completed 
his terms at King's Inn, Dublin, and at Gray's 
Inn, London; but the turn of events in politics 
kept him occupied in other direction than that 
of the law. Gladstone had been converted to 
Home Rule and was about to stake the fortunes 
of the Liberal Party upon a forthcoming meas- 
ure of Irish self-government. The Bill was in- 
troduced in 1886, and Mr. Redmond, in common 
with the whole Irish Party, accepted its terms, 
if not as a final settlement of the Irish question, 
at least as a measure that approached a satisfac- 
tion of Nationalist desires. The Bill of 1886, by 
excluding Irish members from Westminster, fell 
under no suspicion of being that "Federal solu- 
tion" which Butt and the loyal Home Rulers had 
advocated and with which the neo-Fenian sup- 
porters of Parnell refused to have anything to 

1 Mr. Redmond's second wife, whom he married in his middle 
age, was Miss Beazley, of Kiltenbarry. 

[69] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

do. Both in 1886 and 1893 Mr. Redmond was 
a separatist to the extent that he upheld Ire- 
land's right to the status of a Dominion in the 
Empire; and he believed that the Home Rule 
Bill of 1886 sufficiently satisfied that right. 
While, however, he still proposed that Irish af- 
fairs and British affairs should be disassociated 
as far as possible, he no longer — if he had ever 
done so — envisaged the future of Ireland as that 
of a sovereign State, wholly "on its own" in the 
world. Many anti-English speeches of his of this 
and a later date may be quoted, but after his 
visit to Australia nothing ever fell from his lips 
that was truly inconsistent with the theory of a 
liberal Imperialism. He spoke of Ireland as be- 
coming independent of England, but the ideal 
that he had in mind was that of interdependence, 
equally in relation to England and the self-gov- 
erning Colonies. 

Gladstone failed to pass his Home Rule Bill 
through the House of Commons, and the return 
of the Conservatives to power was accompanied 
by a revival of agrarian disturbances in Ireland. 
Mr. Balfour became Chief-Secretary and insti- 
tuted a coercive regime. Among his victims was 
Mr. Redmond, who in 1888 went to prison for 
the first and only time in his life. The offence 
was that of using the language of intimidation 

[70] 



EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 

against a certain landlord of the name of Colonel 
Walker, in a speech at Scarawalsh. Mr. Red- 
mond, who conducted his own defence in the 
police court at Ferns, argued that he had been 
unfairly interpreted. Colonel Walker's eviction 
of a tenant was the subject of his speech; this 
injustice, said Mr. Redmond, would cry out 
against the Colonel wherever he went, no new 
tenant would take the farm, and the Colonel 
would have arrayed against him the united hos- 
tility of the entire people among whom he lived. 
Mr. Redmond argued in the police court that he 
had used the language of prophecy, not of intimi- 
dation, but it was in vain. He suffered five 
weeks' imprisonment as an ordinary criminal, 
sleeping on a plank bed at night and in the day 
time exercising among the pickpockets or study- 
ing the Bible — the only book allowed to him! 

The year 1889 was a quiet one, so far as Mr. 
Redmond was concerned. Hope ran high in Irish 
politics, and the co-operation of the English Lib- 
erals in the Home Rule party grew more close 
than ever. Ireland was wholly united under Par- 
nell and the breakdown of the charge against the 
Irish leader in connection with the murders in- 
the Phoenix Park created an extraordinary ju- 
bilation. Mr. Balfour's coercion regime contin- 

[71] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ued, but its days were evidently numbered. The 
next year disaster overtook the Irish cause. 

In November Captain O'Shea, a former Irish 
member, filed a petition for divorce on the 
grounds of his wife's adultery with Parnell; the 
suit was undefended, and the Court granted a 
decree nisi for the separation of Captain and 
Mrs. O'Shea. The proceedings had been pend- 
ing for some months, during which time it was 
commonly assumed that, whatever the verdict of 
the Court, Parnell's political position would be 
unaltered. 

On November 18th, a day after the verdict, the 
National League held a meeting in Dublin. Mr. 
Redmond presided, and all the speakers — includ- 
ing some men who afterwards repudiated Par- 
nell — declared for the status quo. Nothing had 
happened to necessitate a change of leadership. 
Messrs. William O'Brien, Dillon and O'Connor, 
who were in America, signified their assent to 
the action of the League. Mr. Redmond then vis- 
ited Mr. Healy and arranged for a great Parnell- 
ite demonstration in the Leinster Hall, Dublin. 
He was afterwards accused of having acted with 
a too great precipitancy in so committing the 
Party to an unconditional support of Parnell ; but, 
in fact, a glance at the speeches which were de- 
livered at the historic Dublin demonstration 

[72] 



EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 

shows that on the face of things no difference 
whatever existed between the attitude of Red- 
mond and that of the men who a few weeks 
later were themselves, under the direction of 
Gladstone, to drive Parnell out of public life. 
Mr. Redmond said no more than the others — «■ 
namely, that Parnell's statesmanship was essen- 
tial to the Home Rule cause. But already on 
the side of the Liberal allies of Home Rule voices 
of dissent had been raised, and on the 24th of No- 
vember Gladstone hinted that his Party had been 
greatly embarrassed by the proceedings in the 
Divorce Court and might lose Noncomformist 
support at the General Election if Parnell failed 
to retire. The Irish Party, however, met at West- 
minster and re-elected Parnell Chairman; next 
day they were confronted by Gladstone's letter 
to Mr. Morley, which was, in effect, a declaration 
that the Liberal leader would be unable to work 
any longer with Parnell. 

Mr. Redmond had no hesitations. He was not 
averse to private negotiations for an arrange- 
ment under which — in view of the English situa- 
tion — Parnell would temporarily retire from the 
leadership. But he could not consider such a 
course as the open repudiation of an Irish leader 
by Irishmen at the demand of an English party. 
Gladstone's letter had been published in the Press 

[73] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

and amounted to nothing less than an ultimatum. 
A majority of the Irish members, however, pre- 
pared to bow to the Nonconformist conscience. 
Although re-election to the Chair had been unan- 
imous, the Irish leader knew that it was only upon 
a handful of his followers he could really rely, 
and among these were John and William Red- 
mond, Colonel Nolan, Mr. J. J. Kelly and Mr. 
Leamy. Parnell particularly appreciated the de- 
votion of William Redmond, for he recognised 
that it was wholly personal. William Redmond 
declared that, whatever might be the question of 
political expediency, he would remain faithful, 
and Parnell felt consoled and encouraged. "You 
were always," he said, "one of the most single- 
minded and attached of my colleagues." 

The Party met to reconsider the situation in 
Committee Room XV, and there Parnell — al- 
though never had he given a finer display of his 
genius for leadership — suffered defeat. In the 
debates that then took place Mr. Redmond's own 
ability won for the first time a proper recogni- 
tion. Lord Morley writes in his "Life of Glad- 
stone" concerning the proceedings in the Commit- 
tee Room that "no case was ever better opened 
at Westminster than in the three speeches made 
on the first day by Mr. Sexton and Mr. Healy on 
the one side and Mr. Redmond on the other." In 

[74] 



EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 

gravity, dignity, acute perception and that good 
faith which is the soul of real as distinct from 
specious debate, the Parliamentary critic recog- 
nises them all as of the first order. Justin Mac- 
Carthy, himself an anti-Parnellite, wrote of Red- 
mond that "he took the leading part on the side 
of the minority. He became the foremost cham- 
pion of Parnell's leadership. The position seemed 
to him in the nature of things. I well remember 
the ability and the eloquence which he displayed 
in these debates and the telling manner in which 
he put his argument and his appeals; and the 
course he took was all the more to his credit, be- 
cause Parnell had never singled him out as an 
object of special favour, and indeed, in the opin- 
ion of many of us, had not done full justice to 
his services in the House of Commons." 

Mr. Redmond, like Parnell himself, put the 
Parnellite case upon a basis of cold reason. 
" When we are asked," he exclaimed, "to sell our 
leader to preserve the English alliance, it seems 
to me we are bound to enquire what we are get- 
ting for the price we are paying." Parnell's tac- 
tics was to put the moral question aside, and even 
the question of loyalty, and to ask, "If I retire, 
will you (my opponents) be able to secure satis- 
factory guarantees from Gladstone and the Lib- 

[75] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

erals with regard to the terms of the forthcoming 
Home Rule Bill?" 

A prospective bargain of this sort led to the 
celebrated Boulogne negotiations, in which Mr. 
Redmond played a prominent part. He cabled 
to Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Dillon, who were in 
America, that an accommodation might be ar- 
ranged were a meeting held between Mr. O'Brien 
and Parnell. Mr. O'Brien left America and 
travelled to Boulogne, which was the place ap- 
pointed for the Conference. Mr. Redmond ac- 
companied Parnell to France. It was first pro- 
posed that Parnell should retire from the leader- 
ship on the terms that he should have the right to 
nominate his successor. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. 
Dillon were the principal candidates, and of the 
two Parnell preferred Mr. O'Brien, though he 
doubted if either was capable of coping with Glad- 
stone. 

Throughout the negotiations Mr. Redmond's 
desire was to effect a settlement by every means 
short of an absolute surrender of Parnellite prin- 
ciple; Mr. O'Brien on his part was equally con- 
ciliatory. Parnell's own enigmatic attitude was, 
however, interpreted by Mr. O'Brien and Mr. 
Redmond in opposite ways. Mr. O'Brien thought 
that Parnell listened seriously to the proposals 
for his retirement and intended to fall in with 

[76] 



EARLY POLITICAL LIFE 

the schemes of the "peace makers." Mr. Red- 
mond said, on the other hand, "I feel that O'Brien 
and myself are being treated like a pair of chil- 
dren" and refused to continue negotiations ad in- 
finitum. Parnell returned to his position of Com- 
mittee Room XV, and declined to treat on the 
question of leadership except in connection with 
Liberal guarantees regarding the next Home 
Rule Bill. The Boulogne "conversations" finally 
broke down. They furnished the matter for dis- 
pute and recrimination between rival Irish poli- 
ticians for many a long year, but Mr. Redmond's 
zeal for peace in them was never disputed. 



[77] 



CHAPTER IV 

THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

THE Boulogne negotiations failed in 1891 and 
Parnell died nine months later. In the in- 
tervening period he fought a losing battle with 
a desperation unexampled in modern politics. 
Against a combination of the Gladstonians, the 
priests and the agrarian party his appeal was to 
romantic Ireland, to the righting Nationalists, the 
neo-Fenians of the early 'eighties, and he rallied 
these to his side with the cry of "No English dic- 
tation." 

Mr. Redmond's share in the final struggle was 
slight. Indeed, he abstained from attending par- 
tisan demonstrations during the summer of 1891. 
Anti-Parnellite orators taunted him with having 
"backed the wrong horse," and even suggested 
that he was reconsidering his position in regard 
to Parnell. The taunt was unfounded. A certain 
pessimism in regard to Irish affairs may have 
settled upon the young and ardent politician for 
a while, and, for the rest, domestic concerns ac- 
counted for his inactivity. He had no thought 

[78] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

of joining the anti-Parnellites, though he may 
have had a thought of abandoning public life al- 
together. "I am doing my best," he had written 
to Mr. O'Brien early in 1891, "but I fear my 
influence is less than ever." 

The stimulus of personal loyalty to Parnell fi- 
nally conquered this depression, and he found 
himself fit to face the tragic winter of 189 1-2 with 
a strong if sad heart. He was one of those sum- 
moned to Brighton by Mrs. Parnell after her hus- 
band's death, and the arrangements for the na- 
tional funeral were put into his hands. He shared 
with all that was best in Nationalist Ireland the 
deep emotion of that October of 1891 : — 

Ah, the sad autumn day, 
When the last sad troop came 
Swift down the ancient way, 
Keening a chieftain's name. 

Grey hope was there and dread 
Anger and love in tears; 
They mourned the dear and dead 
Dirge of the ruined years. 

A mother, and forget, 
Nay, all her children's fate 
Ireland remembers yet 
With love insatiate. 1 
^rora "Parnel," by Lionel Johnson. 
[79] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

The Irish literary movement was in its in- 
fancy, and poets, who had hitherto given little 
attention to politics, were enthusiastic for the 
Parnellite cause that had now been entrusted to 
John Redmond. He went among the young poets 
of New Ireland — Katharine Tynan, W. B. Yeats, 
Dora Shorter, Maud Gonne — and delighted them 
with his simplicity, eloquence and charm of man- 
ner. 

Presently the new leader issued a Manifesto 
which thrilled the heart of youth. "On the 
threshold of the tomb the leader whom we mourn 
defined our duty in these memorable words: 'If 
I were dead and gone to-morrow, the men who 
are fighting English influence in Irish public life 
would fight on still. They would still be inde- 
pendent Nationalists, they would still believe in 
the future of Ireland as a nation : and they would 
still protest that it was not by taking orders from 
an English member that Ireland's future could be 
saved, protected or secured.' Fellow-country- 
men, let it be to the glory of our race at home and 
abroad to act up to the spirit of this message. 
God Save Ireland." 

A very few days after Parnell's funeral Mr. 
Redmond accepted the position of leader of that 
minority of the Parliamentarians who had re- 
fused to desert Parnell. His principal colleagues 

[80] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

were Mr. T. C. Harrington, Mr. Edmund Leamy 
and an ex-Fenian, Mr. O'Kelly. An extreme 
anti-Englishism distinguished the utterances of 
his followers — some of whom deliberately sought 
to break up the constitutional Parliamentary agi- 
tation and recreate a movement of physical force. 
Others, under stress of emotion, had lost all sense 
of political direction. Among the latter was 
young William Redmond, though we know from 
the manner of William Redmond's death in the 
present War how little dominated by race hatred 
was this generous soul. 

The elder Redmond preferred to refrain from 
similar violences. Indeed, he now more than ever 
before displayed his characteristic virtues of dig- 
nity and good manners. A critic hostile to all the 
Parliamentarians once alluded to the "Split" as 
the "sweeping-brush" era in Irish politics, but ad- 
mitted that none of its "foul memories" spoiled 
John Redmond's name. "He touched with per- 
fect good-humour even the quarrels of his rivals." 
Nevertheless his little party met with one disaster 
after another, and its representation at Westmin- 
ster was at one time reduced to the ludicrous fig- 
ure of nine. Mr. Redmond offered himself as a 
candidate for the great city of Cork and was 
routed hopelessly. Later on, not without the help 
of Unionist votes, he found a refuge in Water- 

[81] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ford, the city which was to remain faithful to 
him during the remainder of his life and after his 
death chose his son as its representative. 

It was certainly a curious position which he 
now occupied, depending as he did for succour 
not only upon the neo-Fenian anti-Parliamenta- 
rians, but also in some degree upon Irish Union- 
ists, who inclined to back the Parnellite minority. 
"Extremes meet," and the Unionists forgave 
John Redmond his declarations in favour of an 
independent Parliament out of consideration for 
his hostility to Gladstone — the man whom they 
hated most — the political priests, and the agra- 
rians. He won encomiums from both Irish and 
English Unionists — a fact to which the anti-Par- 
nellites did not fail to call attention! Here was 
a sign, said they, that Parnellism had entered 
upon purely destructive courses. 

The second Home Rule Bill was now about to 
be introduced, and the reactionaries everywhere 
anticipated that Mr. Redmond, aided by the Irish- 
Americans (whom he had recently visited), 
would give both it and Gladstone their coup de 
grace. They were disappointed. In the debates 
and the Bill of 1893 Redmond gained a reputa- 
tion not only for oratory but for constructive 
statesmanship. Sir Henry Lacy, the famous Par- 
liamentary critic, expressed the general opinion 

[82] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

when he declared that Redmond's "style" based 
itself upon a substratum of solid knowledge, 
sound common sense and a statesmanlike capac- 
ity to review a complicated situation. Not that 
the Bill which was finally carried in the House of 
Commons by a majority of 43 votes met with his 
ardent approval. He described it as "like a toad, 
ugly and venomous, which wore yet a precious 
jewel in its head." 

In substance the Bill did not differ greatly 
from the proposals of 1886, with the exception 
that an Irish delegation of 80 members was to 
be entitled to attend at Westminster whenever 
Irish affairs were under discussion. Mr. Red- 
mond had supported the proposals of 1886. His 
criticisms of the proposals of 1893 were able and 
sincere; we may, nevertheless, suppose that they 
were fewer than would have been the case had 
his position been one of greater power. As the 
leader of a band of nine men only his Parlia- 
mentary action could not have a decisive influ- 
ence. The House of Lords had in any event de- 
termined to reject the Bill, and this it did on 
September 8th. 

The next year Gladstone retired from public 
life, and, with the advent of Lord Rosebery as 
Liberal Prime Minister, the Redmondite posi- 
tion was considerably strengthened — morally, at 

[83] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

least — for, while Gladstone had a great name 
among the Irish and was genuinely trusted, Lord 
Rosebery had no claim to the trust of National- 
ists. The new Premier at once announced that 
the Liberal Party had weakened upon the sub- 
ject of Home Rule. He said that England, the 
"predominant partner," must first be convinced 
of the desirability of Home Rule before the Liber- 
als could renew any efforts at legislation. There 
should be a Home Rule majority in Parliament 
independent of Irish votes. He proposed as an 
alternative the substitution of local self-Govern- 
ment, which Redmond at once denounced as a 
compromise on a compromise. In spite of Lord 
Rosebery's declarations, the anti-Parnellite Na- 
tionalists continued to support the Government, 
for the not unobscure reason that their funds 
were being largely supplemented by the donations 
of rich English Liberals. Lord Rosebery's atti- 
tude, however, did not save the old Gladstonian 
party from a terrible defeat at the elections of 
1895, and, as may be imagined, the general ef- 
fect of these events in Ireland was a decline in 
the reputation of the anti-Parnellite leaders, who 
were, moreover, bitterly divided among them- 
selves. It was now certain that very strong ef- 
forts towards a reconciliation of the rival Na- 
tionalist groups would be made, and that John 

[84] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

Redmond — as the man who stood clear of any 
responsibility for the disastrous and discredited 
Liberal alliance — would be the strongest candi- 
date for the Chairmanship of a re-united Party. 
On the occasion of Lord Rosebery's accept- 
ance of the Premiership Redmond had issued a 
Manifesto, which is worth quoting, as it sums 
up the position of the Parnellites at that time : — 

As if in mockery of the hopes that were excited 
in Ireland, the Prime Minister, whose continu- 
ance in office was the pledge of Home Rule, is 
cast aside, and a member of the House of Lords 
appointed in his stead. In Lord Rosebery and 
his present Cabinet we can have no confidence, 
and we warn our fellow-countrymen to have 
none: they will concede just as much to Ireland 
as she extorts by organisation among her people 
and absolute unfettered independence of English 
parties in her representation. 

Lord Rosebery's views were those of the Im- 
perialist section of the Liberal party of which 
Mr. Asquith, the Home Secretary, was a princi- 
pal member. Many years later Mr. Asquith and 
Mr. Redmond were to work together in friendly 
collaboration towards Home Rule. In 1893-4, 
however, the two men came into conflict more 

[85] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

than once, chiefly over the question of amnesty 
for certain persons who had been found guilty 
some years previously of connection with dyna- 
mite outrages and the like. Mr. Redmond urged 
that these men were not common criminals and 
he declared further that no Irishman, however 
extreme in methods, deserved censure if he had 
suffered for his devotion to the national cause 
— a generous but, as after the rising of 1916 he 
was to find to his own cost, a dangerous doctrine. 
He also reminded the House of Commons that 
he had himself, on the occasion of his imprison- 
ment in the 'eighties, been treated "as a pick- 
pocket or an ordinary criminal." The British 
Cabinet through Mr. Asquith refused to hearken 
to Mr. Redmond's plea, and the men had to serve 
the remainder of their sentence. One of those 
who survived the ordeal was, it is curious to note, 
Thomas Clarke, a signatory to the Republican 
manifesto who was executed in May, 1916, for 
participation in a rising denounced by Mr. Red- 
mond himself as a "criminal enterprise." 

In 1896 there was a change in the leadership 
of the anti-Parnellite Parliamentarians. Mr. 
Justin MacCarthy retired for reasons of advanc- 
ing age, and Mr. John Dillon occupied the vacant 
chair. Subsequently the anti-Parnellites met in 
Dublin and proposed a resolution in favour of 

[86J 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

independence of all the entanglements of English 
party alliances — the principle for which Mr. Red- 
mond had contended. The anti-Parnellites, how- 
ever, were now more bitterly divided among 
themselves than ever, Mr. T. M. Healy having 
formed a dissentient group which would not ac- 
cept Mr. Dillon's leadership at any price. In 
1897 Mr. Redmond, with a view to unity, pro- 
posed the following aims as those suitable to 
an Irish Nationalist movement : ( 1 ) Home Rule ; 
(2) Independence of all Parties; (3) Manhood 
suffrage; (4) Agitation against the over taxation 
of Ireland; (5) Amnesty of the political prison- 
ers; (6) Land Reform. Mr. William O'Brien 
was meanwhile very active in the endeavour to 
infuse new vitality into the agrarian movement 
by the foundation of the United Irish League. 

But all parties were in sad straits, and the 
Unionists, naturally enough, were in high spirits, 
although the ascendancy party in Ireland could 
not wholly approve of the aim of the Balfour 
brothers, which was to kill Home Rule finally by 
kindness. Mr. Gerald Balfour, the Chief Secre- 
tary, working in close co-operation with Sir Hor- 
ace Plunkett, set up what was called the Recess 
Committee, to which all parties in Ireland were 
invited. The object was to devise means for 
developing Irish agricultural and industrial re- 

[87] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

sources. While the Dillonites were very suspi- 
cious, Mr. Redmond argued, with a greater faith, 
that anything which tended to an increase in the 
material prosperity of the country could only in 
the long run strengthen the demand for national 
self-government. He, therefore, accepted a seat 
on the Recess Committee along with such Union- 
ists as the O'Conor Don and Lord Mayo, and 
was a signatory of the famous Report which led 
to the establishment of the Department of Agri- 
culture and Technical Instruction for Ireland. 

In a similar spirit Mr. Redmond welcomed Mr. 
Gerald Balfour's Local Government Bill of 1898, 
which, as he said afterwards, "made the Irish 
people masters of all the finance and local af- 
fairs of Ireland," yet he had in his mind no 
thought of regarding the measure as in any sense 
a substitute for the national demand of a Parlia- 
ment with an Executive responsible to it. He 
even urged that in the working of local govern- 
ment more even than a proper share of fair play 
should be shown to Irish Unionists and Protes- 
tants — always with a view to disarming the 
fears which this minority of the population had 
shown in regard to Home Rule. Again, he en- 
thusiastically initiated the establishment of a non- 
political agitation having as its end a revision of 
the financial arrangements between Ireland and 

[88] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

Great Britain, on the need for which all Irish- 
men were agreed. It was largely owing to his 
energy that there was set up a Commission to 
enquire into the financial relations between Great 
Britain and Ireland. The report of the Commis- 
sion, signed by English experts as well as by Irish 
representatives, of whom Mr. Redmond was one, 
showed that Ireland was being over-taxed to the 
extent of 2^4 millions per annum. 

In short, during all these years of Unionist 
Government prior to the outbreak of the South 
African War Mr. Redmond succeeded better 
than any of his rivals for the Irish leadership in 
asserting the purity and independence of the Na- 
tional cause and, at the same time, in calming the 
fears of those of his fellow countrymen who had 
looked upon Home Rule as significant only of 
social and religious intolerance. 

Before the establishment of the United Irish 
League there had been three Nationalist organi- 
sations — the National Federation of Mr. Dillon's 
party, Mr. Redmond's National League and Mr. 
Healy's People's Rights Association. The United 
Irish League made a fourth. It had at first a 
purely agrarian end, having grown out of the 
discontent which prevailed in the Congested Dis- 
tricts in the West of Ireland. Mr. Redmond did 
not at this time share Mr. O'Brien's eagerness to 

[89] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

revive the land agitation in its old acute form; 
his hope was rather for a softening of the class 
struggle. He had spoken on the occasion of the 
passing of the Local Government Bill of his de- 
sire that the landlords should assist in a proper 
working of the Bill — nothing, he thought, would 
constitute a better argument for Home Rule than 
that. A new agrarian movement such as Mr. 
O'Brien contemplated would, as he saw, destroy 
the prospect, slight though it was, of converting 
the Irish gentry to patriotic principles. Never- 
theless the League began to sweep all before it 
at the first elections held under the Local Gov- 
ernment Act, and the Parliamentary parties 
realised that the country was re-uniting itself in- 
dependently of their help. As the General Elec- 
tion of 1900 was in sight, some working arrange- 
ment between the Irish leaders became essential. 
Peace in the end came quite suddenly. At the 
opening of the Session of 1900 Mr. Dillon an- 
nounced his resignation of the office of Chairman 
of the anti-Parnellites, and begged his personal 
followers that, in the event of a reunion of Irish 
forces, they would elect a leader from the Par- 
nellites. After that the choice was certain to fall 
upon John Redmond, who had just returned from 
a most successful tour in America, where he had 
been collecting funds for a Parnell memorial. 

[90] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

The Irish members in a body met and "in the 
name of Ireland" declared that divisions were 
over, and that one united Party would henceforth 
act in accordance with the principles and under 
the Constitution of the Irish Parliamentary Party 
from 1885 to 1890. 

Mr. Redmond's success was generally appre- 
ciated in Ireland, and even in England — where 
the re-union had aroused sarcastic comments, 
there were grudging admissions of the ability of 
the new leader. None of the Irish Members was 
at that time popular in England, owing to the 
attitude of hostility which they had adopted to- 
wards the British cause in the South African 
War. The Times, when alluding to the pro-Boer 
spirit in Ireland, argued that Mr. Redmond had 
been elected to the Chair because he represented 
the most violent and irreconcilable of the Nation- 
alist elements. It is true that Mr. Redmond had 
suggested in one speech that England's difficul- 
ties abroad might be Ireland's opportunity at 
home; the context showed, however, that he had 
no thought of appealing to armed force. But 
even while Mr. Redmond made pro-Boer speeches 
as strong as any man's, there was in England as 
well as in Ireland a general, if unexpressed, recog- 
nition of his natural tendency towards modera- 
tion. The real truth was that Mr. Redmond, by 

[91] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

accepting the Leadership of the re-united party, 
had broken with the extremists in Ireland who 
had supported him since the split. The aim of the 
latter had been the destruction of the constitu- 
tional and Parliamentary movement, and, how- 
ever much they may have honoured the memory 
of Parnell, nothing was further from their de- 
sires than a return to the compromise of the 'eigh- 
ties. 

At the General Election of 1906, held on the 
issues of the South African War, the Unionists 
were returned to power by a large majority over 
the combined forces of the Liberals and Nation- 
alists. A renewal of Home Rule proposals 
seemed to be further off than ever. The Nation- 
alist attitude towards the Boer War had seriously 
affected English feeling, and the Imperialist wing 
of the Liberal party, led by Lord Rosebery, Lord 
Haldane and Sir Edward Grey, wished to cut it- 
self off from all connection, even in Opposition, 
with men who had cheered the news of reverses 
to the British arms. 

In 1900 Queen Victoria, then in extreme old 
age, took a fancy to visit Ireland as a mark of 
appreciation of the deeds of Irish soldiers in 
South Africa. Mr. Redmond and his colleagues 
were unable to advise that she should receive 
from Nationalist corporations and public bodies 

[92] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

any token of loyal welcome. The position thus 
adopted recommended itself as necessary, for if 
the Queen had received anything like an official 
reception from Nationalists, the occasion would 
have been exploited by the political opponents of 
the Irish Party; it would have been argued that 
the Home Rule demand was weakening, and that 
the Irish Party's attitude towards the Boer War 
had been repudiated by the people. The fact 
was that the Irish people were thoroughly in sym- 
pathy with the Boers, and Mr. Redmond's criti- 
cism of the war erred, from the popular point of 
view, on the side of moderation. He did not wish 
to offend British opinion unnecessarily, and he 
disapproved of insult being offered to the British 
Army and to Irish soldiers. His extremist col- 
leagues, like Michael Davitt, wholly rejected 
every counsel of expediency, and would have pre- 
ferred to let Home Rule lie in abeyance for a cen- 
tury rather than abstain from offering the Boer 
Republics whatever help might be in their power. 
At the conclusion of the war Irish interest con- 
centrated itself again upon the domestic land 
problem. Mr. Redmond ruled the Parliamenta- 
rians at Westminster with great tact and sympa- 
thy, and all the former warring elements— ex- 
cept that which Mr. Healy represented — had 
coalesced with extraordinary ease. With Ire- 

[93] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

land, however, the man of the hour was William 
O'Brien, the founder of the United Irish League. 
Mr. Redmond's strength lay in Parliament, and 
in the management of those with whom he came 
into direct contact. The respect and admiration 
which his personality won among the Nationalist 
members lasted until the end of his life, and to 
this respect and admiration enthusiasm was often 
added. Nationalist members were ready to com- 
pare Redmond advantageously with Parnell, to 
find that he had all the former leader's skill with- 
out the former leader's faults, to repose on him 
the completest trust. The country at large, how- 
ever, although it also trusted Mr. Redmond, ex- 
tended to others — now to Mr. O'Brien, now to 
Michael Davitt, now to Mr. Dillon — a larger trib- 
ute of popularity. Mr. Redmond did not aspire 
to be a native agitator, and when he accepted the 
agrarian programme of the United Irish League, 
it was chiefly as a means to the political end of 
Irish Parliamentary unity. The League's chief 
value in his eyes was that of a necessary elec- 
toral organisation which would re-introduce or- 
der and discipline into Nationalist politics. 

The Government, by appointing Mr. George 
Wyndham as Chief-Secretary, signalised its ad- 
hesion to a policy of reform, and in 1902 an im- 
portant Land Purchase Bill was introduced into 

[94] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

the House of Commons. As the Bill did not 
meet Mr. O'Brien's approval the League issued 
orders to the parliamentarians for its rejection. 
Mr. O'Brien had demanded the compulsory buy- 
ing out of the landlords; and the measure pro- 
fessed by Mr. Wyndham was designed merely to 
quicken the rate of purchase under previous 
Acts. This action upon the part of the League 
was necessarily followed on the one hand by ex- 
tremely violent measures on the part of the agra- 
rians and, on the other, by a repressive Govern- 
mental policy. "No less than ten members of 
Parliament (one or two of them with an exceed- 
ing ill grace) soon found themselves within pri- 
son walls, and it was manifest to all men, and 
most manifest of all to Mr. Wyndham, that we 
were only at the beginning of the upheaval." 1 
Mr. Redmond loyally shared all the risks, and 
was at one moment in danger of being prosecuted 
for conspiracy by the trust which the landlords 
had organised for self -protection. 

Then, all of a sudden, Mr. O'Brien changed 
his tactics and issued directions for a cessation 
of hostilities. As a result, not many months had 
passed before representatives of the tenants and 
landlords were sitting at a round-table in Dublin 

1 "The Olive Branch in Ireland." By William O'Brien. 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

in the endeavour to find terms, agreeable to both, 
out of which Mr. Wyndham should construct 
another Land Bill. There is no doubt that Mr. 
Redmond welcomed the more genial atmosphere ; 
he accepted the proposal for a Conference (orig- 
inally brought forward from the landlords' side 
by Captain Shaw Taylor) in a spirit of true 
statesmanship and was nominated to act, along 
with Mr. O'Brien and Mr. T. W. Russell, in the 
interests of the tenants, Mr. Harrington, then 
Lord Mayor of Dublin, occupying the chair. The 
meetings with the landlords opened on December 
20th, 1902, soon after Mr. Redmond's return 
from a short American tour. 

The results of the Conference were good, al- 
though not all that Mr. O'Brien had demanded 
in war time could be conceded at the peace nego- 
tiations. The landlord representation agreed up- 
on the desirability of peasant proprietorship, and 
a proposal that the taxpayer should make up 
differences of price was unanimously accepted 
by both sides. Thus the idea of compelling the 
landlords was abandoned by the tenants' party, 
and there was substituted for it the notion of 
making sales so attractive financially as to en- 
sure a widespread transfer of property through- 
out the country. Landlords were to be assured 
of second term net incomes, and occupiers' rents 

[96] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

were to be reduced by not less than 20%. There 
was to be a complete settlement of the evicted 
tenants' question. Mr. Redmond and the other 
delegates regarded the state bonus as "the begin- 
ning and the end, the marrow and the breath of 
life, of the Land Conference Agreement." * 

Mr. O'Brien, rushing from one extreme to 
another, had hailed the outcome of the Confer- 
ence as marking an end of the Irish class war: 
a declaration which greatly vexed sturdy demo- 
crats like Michael Davitt and Radicals like Mr. 
John Dillon. Mr. Redmond, without expressing 
so great an enthusiasm, honestly supported a Re- 
port to which he had put his signature. He was 
eager for national appeasement, and a policy of 
conciliation harmonised, as Mr. O'Brien observed 
truly, with all his inborn sympathies and taste. 
His action at the Conference was approved at 
the next meeting of the National Directory of the 
League; and in various speeches he disposed of 
legends circulated by the extremists to the effect 
that the Conference had recommended tenants to 
pay 33 years' purchase for their lands. "They 
need not pay more," he said, "than the average 

1 The Irish as well as the English taxpayer had, of course, to 
contribute to this bonus. All the rest of the expense of financing 
the subsequent measure was borne for the first five years by the 
Irish taxpayer. 

[97] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

amount (20 or 22 years' purchase) paid by others 
in recent years." 

Mr. Wyndham's legislative measure, however, 
was not as good as had been hoped. It fell short 
of the suggestions of the Land Conference both 
as regards the amount of bonus offered as a 
bridge between landlord and tenant, and also as 
regards the reduction of the tenants' annuities. 
The majority of landlords and tenants desired, 
however, that the Bill should pass into law, and 
this happened; largely owing to Mr. Redmond's 
moderate statesmanship and his consummate Par- 
liamentary ability, the wrecking designs of the 
extremists on either side were frustrated. Over 
large parts of the country, farmers took advan- 
tage of the new Act, and, generally, in spite of 
the continued carpings of Mr. Dillon and of the 
Freeman's Journal, people saw the point of an 
excellent story related by John Redmond in a 
speech at Arklow on September 15th, 1905: 

We read from time to time criticisms to the 
effect : Oh, the people could have purchased their 
holdings under the Ashbourne Act for 17 years' 
purchase. Could they? If they could then there 
was no need for this Bill. I was talking the 
other day to a farmer in County Wicklow, and 
he said this very thing to me. He said, "But, Sir, 

[98] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

we could have purchased our holdings under the 
old Bill for IJ years' purchase." And I said to 
him, "Why didn't you?" And he answered, "Oh, 
the landlord would not sell." That is the whole 
question in a nutshell. 

The Act did not turn out to be a final settle- 
ment, but was, nevertheless, epoch making, in 
that it made peasant proprietorship the basis of 
the Irish land system. Mr. Redmond's work in 
connection with the conference, the passage of 
the measure, and its acceptance in Ireland must 
be numbered among the most important achieve- 
ments of his life. 

Meanwhile he was confronted by a crisis in 
Irish political circles caused by the disturbed re- 
lations of his two principal followers, Mr. Wil- 
liam O'Brien and Mr. John Dillon. Mr. O'Brien 
and Mr. John Dillon had been taking very differ- 
ent views of the progress of affairs in Ireland. 
Mr. O'Brien, delighted at the outcome of the 
Land Conference, proposed that the Home Rule 
question itself should be attacked along similar 
lines ; and he expressed the most optimistic opin- 
ions of Mr. Wyndham, Sir Antony Macdonnell, 
the Under-Secretary, and Lord Dunraven, the 
leader of the moderate landlords' party. Mr. 
O'Brien had become a convert to the doctrine of 

[99] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

evolution in politics, and believed that a substan- 
tial measure of self-government might be ob- 
tained from the Unionist Government then in 
power. To this end he proposed that the Irish 
party should be as conciliatory as possible to- 
wards that moderate Unionist opinion which 
Lord Dunraven and Mr. Wyndham represented. 
Mr. Dillon, who held a much lower view of the 
achievement of the Land Conference, considered 
that Mr. O'Brien was acting under the stimulus 
of a blind enthusiasm. He gravely distrusted the 
reforming landlords, and by temperament would 
have much preferred that the realisation of Irish 
hopes should come through the English Radicals. 
Dillon looked for the knockout blow, O'Brien ad- 
vocated a peace of understanding. 

Mr. Redmond put forward his best efforts as 
a conciliator, while at the same time accepting 
with perfect loyalty his responsibility for the 
line of action which Mr. O'Brien and himself had 
adopted at the Conference. His position was ren- 
dered very difficult by stories circulated with re- 
gard to profits which it was alleged he had made 
from the sale of his own small estate under the 
Wyndham Act. But as regards the questions of 
general policy he was not wholly in agreement 
with either combatant. Unlike Mr. Dillon, he 
thought that the reforming landlords deserved 

[100] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

much encouragement. On the other hand, it did 
not seem to him that the whole course of Nation- 
alist policy should be altered to suit the conven- 
ience of Lord Dunraven and his friends, who 
were after all but a small group within the Union- 
ist party and of doubtful influence. 

He wisely elected to pursue a cautious cause. 
He kept in close touch with William O'Brien, but 
at the same time refused to pass a sentence of 
excommunication upon Mr. O'Brien's critics. He 
would not deny to Mr. Dillon and Mr. Davitt a 
right to their private opinions, or even to propa- 
ganda in the interest of their particular views of 
the Land Act. Such action on his part would 
have precipitated a split in the Nationalist move- 
ment; and he could not but remember how as 
Parnellite leader he had insisted on the rights of 
minorities. Mr. O'Brien's demands were insis- 
tent; he refused them, and an amicable parting 
followed. Mr. O'Brien withdrew from the politi- 
cal scene. The two men separated on "terms of 
undiminished personal cordiality." Henceforth 
Mr. Dillon was Mr. Redmond's principal adviser, 
which is not to say that the leader did not act on 
many occasions on his own initiative. 

Meanwhile events in England tended to dis- 
credit Mr. William O'Brien's idea of Irish co- 
operation with the Conservative. It was evident 

[101] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

that disaster was in store for Mr. Balfour's Gov- 
ernment, and that the English electors only await- 
ed an opportunity of turning it out of office. 
There was talk in Conservative circles of a set- 
tlement of the University question ; Mr. Redmond 
refused to be impressed. When Parliament met 
in 1904 he spoke very strongly, and in April of 
the same year he foretold the coming collapse of, 
Mr. Balfour's Government, adding that "in all 
human probability it is reserved for the repre- 
sentatives of Ireland to give the final blow that 
will end their existence." 

The Chief Secretary, Mr. Wyndham, sincerely 
wished to proceed with a policy of reform, and 
had even negotiated with Lord Lansdowne and 
Lord Dunraven on the subject of a devolution to 
Ireland of a measure of self-government. Mr. 
Redmond recognised Mr. Wyndham's sincerity, 
but wisely doubted his strength of purpose. What 
the reforming landlords and he proposed was not 
clear ; some said merely "a co-ordination of Castle 
Boards," others foresaw an important step in the 
direction of National Government. Mr. Red- 
mond, who was lecturing in America, was for a 
time inclined to interpret the early activities of 
the Land Reform Association in a very favour- 
able sense. "Home Rule may come at any mo- 
ment," he declared. 

[102] 



THE MANTLE OF PARNELL 

He was to learn the truth, on his return home, 
when Mr. Wyndham, in face of Orange attacks, 
repudiated all sympathy with the idea of a "Stat- 
utory legislative assembly," which was one of 
the items of Lord Dunraven's programme. But 
even with that surrender the Orangemen were 
not content; nothing would satisfy them but that 
the Government should force Mr. Wyndham to 
resign and appoint in his stead a representative 
of unbending Unionism, Mr. Walter Long. Mr. 
Long was Chief Secretary during the remainder 
of the Government's life, during which time no 
awkward problems of policy confronted John 
Redmond. A simple war to the knife prevailed. 
The chief incident of the last months of Mr. 
Balfour's Administration was the defeat, effected 
by Mr. Redmond's mastery of Parliamentary pro- 
cedure, of an attempt by the Government to in- 
troduce a redistribution scheme which would have 
had the result of reducing the Irish representa- 
tion by nearly forty members. The final collapse 
of the Tory Government justified Mr. Red- 
mond's prediction that the Irish Party would give 
it the coup de grace. 



[103]; 



CHAPTER V 

TOWARDS HOME RULE 

THE years 1906 to 19 10 embraced the period 
which established Mr. Redmond's reputa- 
tion as a political strategist of the first order. I 
use the expression "political strategist" in no of- 
fensive sense. In his case it bore none of that 
connotation of underhand intrigue which has 
done so much to bring British political life into 
public disrepute. A certain amount of "wire-pull- 
ing" and manipulation is, perhaps, in the. modern 
democracy inseparable from the position of a 
party leader, and not least of an Irish party lead- 
er. But this aspect of politics, though he did not 
neglect it when it was necessary to engage in it, 
was temperamentally distasteful to Mr. Redmond 
and altogether alien from his true political genius. 
For him politics were not the happy hunting- 
ground of the self-seeking intriguer, but the high- 
est form of public service to which a man's talents 
could be devoted. When I speak of his reputa- 
tion as a political strategist I mean nothing less 

[104] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

worthy than the consummate skill with which he 
used his political talents to mould political forces 
and seize political opportunities for the advance- 
ment of those Irish interests in whose service he 
spent his life. 

The period following the return of the Liberal 
Party to power put those talents to a very severe 
test. Mr. Redmond's role while the Conservative 
Party, from which he could expect only minor 
concessions, was in office, was relatively easy; 
his role after the return of a Liberal Administra- 
tion from which he might hope to secure the reali- 
sation of all his political hopes was, paradoxical- 
ly, very much more difficult. His difficulties be- 
gan even before the General Election which fol- 
lowed the resignation in December, 1905, of the 
Conservative Government, for whose defeat — 
finally brought about over the question of the ad- 
ministration of the Irish Land Act — Mr. Red- 
mond's party was largely responsible. The Brit- 
ish electorate was scarcely yet educated into ac- 
ceptance of the principle of Home Rule : the mem- 
ory of the Boer War, and of the attitude which 
the Irish Parliamentary Party had adopted to- 
wards it, was not yet far behind. Sir Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman, the new Liberal Prime 
Minister, though himself an unwavering advocate 
of Home Rule, was obliged, in order to secure the 

[105] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

co-operation of certain powerful members of the 
Liberal League, and as part of the price of heal- 
ing the differences which had arisen in the party 
at the time of the Boer War, to agree that, in 
the event of a Liberal victory at the polls, a Home 
Rule measure would not be proposed in the new 
Parliament. This agreement created a position 
of extreme difficulty for Mr. Redmond and his 
colleagues, who in the situation thus created ad- 
vised Irish electors in Great Britain to vote in 
the first place for Labour candidates, and as be- 
tween Tory and Liberal to vote for the Liberal. 
The Irish vote was largely responsible for the 
return to the new Parliament of some forty La- 
bour members. 

Contrary to general expectation the Liberal 
Government was returned by a majority so large 
as to be independent of the Irish vote, and Mr. 
Redmond was disappointed in his hope of hold- 
ing the balance of power. Nevertheless his party 
occupied such a position as enabled him to ex- 
tract important concessions from a Government 
more or less sympathetic towards Ireland. In 
the first session of the new Parliament the Evict- 
ed Tenants Act was passed, which restored to 
their holdings a very large number of the 
"wounded soldiers of the Land War." In the 
same session sanction was also obtained for the 

[106] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

provision of five million pounds towards the com- 
pletion of the housing of Irish agricultural la- 
bourers, and this sum was subsequently increased 
to eight millions. 

The main Liberal measure of the new Ses- 
sion, the Education Bill, presented Mr. Redmond 
with another difficulty. The Bill, introduced un- 
der pressure of the Radical Nonconformist ele- 
ment, was in many respects repugnant to Roman 
Catholic feeling. He was able to secure the con- 
cessions which were considered necessary to safe- 
guard the religious atmosphere in the schools, 
and was publicly thanked for his services by 
Cardinal Bourne and the English Hierarchy. Mr. 
Redmond, however, who during the Parnellite 
split had repeatedly insisted that the prevalence 
of clerical influence was killing Home Rule in 
English public opinion, had necessarily to walk 
warily in this matter, and secured the desired 
concessions with infinite tact. 

It will be convenient to take account here, be- 
fore we proceed to follow Mr. Redmond's part 
in the development of the Home Rule struggle, 
of his connection with the two chief Irish meas- 
ures of the Parliament of 1906-1910 — the Irish 
University Act and the Irish Land Purchase Act 
of 1909. For many years an agitation had been 
conducted for the establishment of a University 

[107] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

with a Catholic atmosphere, in order to meet the 
grievance of young Irish Catholics who were de- 
barred from University education elsewhere than 
at Trinity College, which, though it opened its 
doors to Catholics (Mr. Redmond himself grad- 
uated there) was a Protestant foundation. Suc- 
cessive schemes had been prepared and had fallen 
through, until finally in 1908 the government, un- 
der Mr. Redmond's continual urging of the im- 
portance of the question from the point of view 
of "the brain value of the nation," introduced the 
Irish University Bill. This measure created two 
new Universities — one the Federal National Uni- 
versity, consisting of the Cork and Galway Col- 
leges of the old Royal University (merely an ex- 
amining body) and a new College in Dublin, and 
the other in Belfast, thus satisfying simultane- 
ously the grievances of both Catholics and Pres- 
byterians. The governing bodies were made elec- 
tive, no religious tests were imposed, and powers 
of affiliation were conferred so as to include May- 
nooth. This final establishment for the Catholic 
people of Ireland of what he himself described 
as a great democratic and national University 
ranks highest, perhaps, after the enactment of 
Home Rule among his political triumphs. 

Mr. Redmond greatly resented the suggestion 
that the establishment of the new Universities, 

[108] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

distinctively Catholic and Presbyterian respec- 
tively, was calculated to perpetuate religious dif- 
ferences. That certainly was not his intention 
in pressing the Irish Catholic claim for suitable 
University education. He was concerned merely 
with the practical grievance of a Catholic being 
deprived of University teaching because of what 
he regarded as the danger to his faith. Whether 
he so regarded it himself (a moot question, since, 
although he was himself educated at Trinity 
College, he refused to send his son there) was 
altogether beside the point. He approached the 
question, in fact, not as a political Catholic, but 
merely as a Catholic politician. 

One may appropriately quote here his own 
earlier assertion of the Irish national movement's 
independence of all religious creeds. "I say the 
National movement is not a Catholic movement. 
It is not in conflict with the interests of the Cath- 
olic religion; God forbid! — that is the religion of 
the overwhelming majority of our people. But 
the National movement is a movement embrac- 
ing within its fold men of all religions, and those 
who seek to turn the Nationalist movement into 
a Catholic movement would be repudiating some 
of the highest pages of our national history and 
forgetting the memory of some of the greatest 

[109] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

of our national heroes who professed the newer 
and not the older creed of our country." 

The Irish Land Act of 1909 — commonly known 
as the "Birrell Act" — the other chief Irish meas- 
ure of the Session, was introduced at Mr. Red- 
mond's instance to deal with the slowness of the 
transfer, caused by a provision of the Wyndham 
Act of 1903 limiting the issue of Irish Land Stock 
to five million pounds yearly. The new Act did 
not go so far as Mr. Redmond would have 
wished; it extended the principle of compulsory 
sale only to nine counties instead of to the whole 
country; but its modifications and additions to 
the Wyndham Act brought much nearer to com- 
pletion the programme laid down by the Land 
Conference of 1903 in which he had played a lead- 
ing part in bringing about the peaceful agrarian 
resolution in Ireland. 

We may now resume our study of Mr. Red- 
mond's part in the final struggle for Home Rule. 
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the new Liberal 
Prime Minister, as we have seen, had been com- 
pelled to agree before the General Election that, 
in the event of a Liberal victory at the polls, a 
Home Rule measure would not be proposed in 
the new Parliament. This agreement, however, 
did not exclude dealing with the alternative 
scheme which had come to be known as "devolu- 

[110] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

tion." Sir Antony Macdonnell's scheme of ad- 
ministrative Home Rule brought forward under 
the late Administration and then killed by the 
opposition of the Orangemen and the more ex- 
treme Tories still lingered "in the air"; and it 
was soon apparent that the Liberal Government 
proposed to attempt a new move in this direction. 
The Chief Secretary, Mr. Bryce, was appointed 
to the post of British Ambassador to the United 
States, and it was rumoured that Mr. Redmond 
himself was offered the vacant position. Mr. 
Birrell, the new Chief Secretary, a close friend of 
Mr. Redmond, was generally understood to be 
the Irish leader's nominee. "There are two men," 
writes Mr. Stead at the beginning of 1907, "whose 
opinion on the matter would be worth having, 
Mr. Redmond and Sir Antony Macdonnell. The 
new Chief Secretary, whoever he may be, ought 
to regard himself as Mr. Redmond's man. Mr. 
Redmond himself ought to be Chief Secretary, 
but as he is precluded from taking the post the 
Cabinet ought to accept Mr. Redmond's nominee 
and the new Chief Secretary ought to do what 
Mr. Redmond tells him. For Mr. Redmond, if 
Home Rule were granted, would be Prime Minis- 
ter of Ireland." 

In these circumstances it was generally as- 
sumed that Mr. Redmond was privy to the draft- 

[111] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ing of the scheme of devolution introduced by Mr. 
Birrell in May, 1907, under the title of the Irish 
Councils Bill. Mr. Redmond, however, earlier in 
the year, had declared that he could only look 
upon a scheme of administrative Home Rule as 
a makeshift; had undertaken only that when the 
Government's proposals were drafted they should 
be submitted to a Nationalist Convention; and 
had warned the Government of the danger of 
half measures. The Irish Councils Bill upon its 
introduction was found merely to propose a co- 
ordination of the chief Castle Boards under a 
popular council, which was to be partly elective 
and partly nominated, and was to have certain 
limited powers of controlling finance and admin- 
istration. 

Mr. Redmond's attitude towards the Bill from 
first to last is best expressed in a series of quo- 
tations from his own speeches. In his speech on 
its introduction he neither praised nor blamed 
it, accepted or rejected it. He said that he had 
never addressed the House under a heavier sense 
of responsibility ; that no one in his position could 
take upon himself the onus of refusing any meas- 
ure, however small, that would remove even one 
Irish grievance ; and that the Bill must await the 
decision of the National Convention. When the 
Convention assembled the scheme was in fact 

[112] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

unanimously rejected on his own motion. It was 
charged against Mr. Redmond by some of his 
own friends that upon this question he "led his 
party from behind." The charge scarcely seems 
to be substantiated in the light of his own 
speeches. Six months before the introduction of 
the Bill he had said that "when the hour of that 
Convention comes, any influence which I possess 
with my fellow-countrymen will be used to induce 
them to reject any proposal, no matter how plaus- 
ible, which in my judgment may be calculated to 
injure the prestige of the Irish Party, and dis- 
rupt the national movement, because my first and 
my greatest policy, which overshadows every- 
thing else, is to preserve a united National party 
in Parliament, and a united powerful organisa- 
tion in Ireland, until we achieve the full measure 
to which we are entitled." 

It appears that on consideration of the Coun- 
cils Bill after its introduction he saw in it pre- 
cisely that element of division which he had de- 
clared would lead him to urge its rejection. "By 
the constitution of this Council it. is extremefy 
doubtful to my mind," he said in his speech at the 
Convention, "whether the real feeling of the 
overwhelming mass of the Irish people would be 
truly reflected in a workable majority on the 
Council, and there would be the greatest possible 

[113] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

danger that the Council would constitute a sort 
of rival body to the Irish Nationalist Party, 
which, as I have said, I believed to be the great- 
est weapon, with an organised country behind it, 
which Ireland has in her possession." 

In the September after the rejection of the Bill 
by the Nationalist Convention Mr. Redmond de- 
clared that, "its production and its fate will prove, 
in my opinion, probably a blessing in disguise. 
Certainly the fate of that great measure has 
shown the Government the impossibility of satis- 
fying Ireland with anything short of real Home 
Rule, and it has also made this certain, that Home 
Rule and not Devolution will be the Irish 
policy put before the electors at the next General 
Election. If that Bill had been accepted here as 
an installment, and if it had passed, as it would 
have passed, the House of Commons, it most un- 
doubtedly would have been rejected by the House 
of Lords, and then it — that is, the Irish Councils 
Bill — would have definitely passed into the pro- 
gramme of the Liberal Party as their Irish policy, 
whereas now, after what has happened, Home 
Rule, and whole Home Rule, must be the policy 
of the Liberal Party before the next General 
Election." 

That prediction was justified by the event ; but 
Mr. Redmond's action in connection with the 

[114] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

Bill was the subject of much criticism in Ireland. 
There were those on the one hand who complained 
that the immediate rejection of the Bill was bad 
policy, and would have preferred a less uncom- 
promising attitude. There were those on the 
other hand who charged Mr. Redmond with hav- 
ing been ready to accept the Bill but for the un- 
mistakable manifestations of hostility towards it, 
and denounced him for his weakness. Even in 
his own party it produced no little dissension and 
even some secessions. From this period dates 
the definite cleavage of the new party of ''con- 
ciliators" which at the next General Election was 
to be returned, to the strength of ten members, 
under the leadership of Mr. William O'Brien — 
the All-for-Ireland group. For the moment, 
however, differences were healed, and at the be- 
ginning of the session of 1908 Mr. Redmond had 
the satisfaction of seeing carried by a large ma- 
jority in the House of Commons his amendment 
to the Address to the Throne reaffirming the 
principle of Home Rule. In the same year he 
and his party played a prominent part in carry- 
ing the Old Age Pensions Act by which a sum 
of two and a half million pounds per annum was 
distributed among the aged poor of Ireland. 

In 1909 the introduction of Mr. Lloyd George's 
famous Budget marked the beginning of the final 

[115] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

phase in the struggle against the Lords which 
ended in the destruction of the absolute veto of 
that Chamber over democratic legislation and 
paved the way to the passing of the Home Rule 
Act. The influence of Mr. Redmond dominated 
all this chapter of British political history. The 
Budget of 1907 in many respects — notably in its 
dealings with land and liquor — hit Irish inter- 
ests somewhat severely. Mr. Redmond, fore- 
seeing that a greater issue than that of the Budget 
itself was destined to arise from it, in the main 
supported the Bill, but at the same time made it 
clear that in its final stages the Government must 
reckon with his party's opposition unless material 
concessions were made to the Irish interests af- 
fected. The Government, after a considerable pe- 
riod of hesitation, substantially conceded Mr. 
Redmond's demands. The further question re- 
mained, however, what attitude the Irish Party 
should adopt in the crisis which was now clearly 
approaching. It was apparent that the Lords 
were about to reject the Budget, and that a great 
constitutional issue would arise in which the in- 
terests of British democracy would be involved in 
a degree which had not been known since the 
great Reform Bill of '32. 

This was an issue on which the Nationalist 
Party could scarcely afford to take risks of alien- 

[116] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

ating the Liberal and Labour Parties. "The is- 
sue," as Mr. Redmond said later at Manchester, 
"is Home Rule for England." But at the same 
time his first objective was an assurance that a 
popular victory would be a victory for Irish de- 
mocracy as well as for British democracy. It 
was eventually decided by the Nationalist Party 
to let the Budget pass the House of Commons, 
in the expectation that the Lords would make 
good their threat of rejection and precipitate a 
great constitutional struggle. This expectation 
was duly realised, and, on the Budget being re- 
turned to the Commons, Mr. Asquith, who had 
succeeded to the Premiership on the death of Sir 
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, moved a resolution 
protesting against the action of the Lords and 
announced that the Government had advised the 
King to dissolve Parliament. In the division on 
this resolution, which was carried by a large ma- 
jority, Mr. Redmond and his colleagues took no 
part. "To Liberals," wrote an English chronicler 
of the time, "this aloofness of the Irish members 
at a critical moment in the last hours of a Par- 
liament that has done much for Ireland was a 
keen disappointment." 

Mr. Redmond's abstention, of course, was due 
to the fact that he was still without an assurance 
that Irish support of the Liberals would pave 

[117] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

the way for Home Rule. It was a warning to 
the Government that so far as Mr. Redmond and 
the Nationalist Party were concerned the limit- 
ing of the power of the House of Lords, the stand- 
ing obstacle to Home Rule, must not leave to 
the chances of the future the question of Irish 
self-government. The Irish leader was fully re- 
solved that this great question should be definitely 
and unmistakably associated with the constitu- 
tional issue. Mr. Asquith's succession to Sir 
Henry Campbell-Bannerman had been looked 
upon with some suspicion by the Nationalists, and 
Mr. Redmond was determined that his attitude 
should not be left in doubt. 

The election campaign had not been long in 
progress when the desired assurance from Mr. 
Asquith was forthcoming. Speaking at the Al- 
bert Hall on December ioth, 1909, the Liberal 
Prime Minister declared that the absolute veto 
of the House of Lords must go, and that this in 
itself would mean the removal of the greatest 
obstacle in the path of the Home Rule cause. He 
went on to declare that "speaking on behalf of 
the Government, in March of last year, a week 
before my accession to the office of Prime Min- 
ister, I described Ireland as the one unmistakable 
failure of British statesmanship. I repeat here 
to-night what I said then, speaking on behalf of 

[118] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

my colleagues and I believe of my party, that the 
solution of the problem can be found only in one 
way — by a policy which, while explicitly safe- 
guarding the supremacy and indefeasible author- 
ity of the Imperial Parliament, will set up in Ire- 
land a system of full self-government in regard 
to purely Irish affairs. There is not, and there 
cannot be, any question of separation; there is 
not, and there cannot be, any question of rival or 
competing supremacies ; but, subject to these con- 
ditions, that is the Liberal policy." That declara- 
tion, in Mr. T. P. O'Connor's words, sounded the 
death-knell of Devolution by an open avowal of 
the full Gladstonian policy, and the position lost 
by the rejection of the Home Rule Bill of 1893 
was regained in 1909. 

Despite this vindication of Mr. Redmond's 
leadership, however, he had in the first general 
Election of 19 10 to face, for the first time since 
his election as leader of the re-united Irish Par- 
liamentary Party, an organised opposition in the 
constituencies. Mr. William O'Brien had now 
definitely seceded and formed a new party un- 
der the name of the All-for-Ireland League, and 
brought back eight representatives from Mun- 
ster constituencies to oppose Mr. Redmond un- 
der his leadership. Mr. Redmond, in his election 
speeches, recalled the programme which he had 

[119] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

outlined four years earlier to his constituents at 
Waterford. He had spoken of the education 
question : the Party had given them a great Irish 
national democratic University. He had spoken 
of the land question: the principle of compulsory 
purchase had been extended to nine counties and 
even beyond wherever congestion existed, while 
the restoration of the evicted tenants, which 
should have taken place in 1903 had the Party had 
its way, had now been arranged. He recalled also 
what the Party had done for the improvement of 
housing, urban as well as rural. With regard to 
the Budget, he showed that the Party had suc- 
ceeded in getting all the agricultural land exempt- 
ed from the new taxes, and in providing that all 
the money raised in Ireland on such land as had 
increased in value through the action of the com- 
munity should go to the local authorities in Ire- 
land and be used in the interests of the working 
classes. All these things he ventured to lay be- 
fore the Irish people as the work of four years, 
and if he were accused of having failed to ob- 
tain Home Rule, while he had refused the Irish 
Councils Bill, it was only, he explained, because 
if that Bill had not been rejected it would have 
become, at any rate for their life-time, the high 
water-mark of Liberal effort. 

The election campaign was remarkable for an 
[120] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

exceedingly bitter personal contest between Mr. 
Redmond and Mr. T. M. Healy, sustained on Mr. 
Redmond's side, in the face of violent attacks, 
with much dignity. "Public life in the country," 
he said, "is hard owing to such attacks as these, 
and it is bitter indeed to be subjected to attacks 
of this kind. My power for good has been small ; 
my abilities are limited. God knows there is no 
one more conscious of his own shortcomings than 
I am of mine, but I know that my motives have 
been honest and sound. I know I have given my 
best to the service of the people of Ireland. When 
you are tired of me, when my colleagues in the 
House of Commons are tired of me, I am quite 
ready to-morrow to step down and out, and when 
that day comes I will humbly and loyally do my 
best to support those who may take my place. 
But never so long as I live will I allow myself to 
be driven out by calumny and abuse." 

"The position to which I was elected," said 
Mr. Redmond again, "was one of great difficulty 
at «oiy time, but at the time I was put into it the 
difficulties were enormous and unprecedented. 
So far as the Parnell split is concerned, I think I 
have succeeded. I have endeavoured to be patient 
under unjust and ungenerous criticism. I have 
endeavoured to extend toleration to every man. 
I did not hesitate to risk my position and my popu- 

[121] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

larity with my countrymen and my colleagues in 
order to avoid the necessity of extreme action 
against men who were mutineers." The General 
Election, as has been stated, reduced the strength 
of Mr. Redmond's party by eight through the 
secession of the All-for-Ireland group. The suc- 
cess of this secession was influenced indirectly 
by the Sinn Fein movement, whose bearing upon 
Mr. Redmond's political fortunes is considered at 
length in a later chapter. 

In Great Britain the Irish vote was thrown on 
the side of the Liberal and Labour candidates, 
and contributed largely to the coalition majority 
of 124. Mr. Redmond took an energetic part in 
the election campaign in Great Britain as well as 
in Ireland. In his speeches he identified the cause 
of the British and Irish democracies, asserting 
the truth of Lecky's contention, that no single 
element in the House of Commons has been more 
fruitful in influencing the progress of English 
democracy than the Irish Party. He maintained 
in a speech at Manchester to a largely Irish au- 
dience that the House of Lords alone — not the 
people of England — were really hostile to Irish 
self-government, and that the abolition or the 
limitation of the veto of the Lords meant Home 
Rule for Ireland. It was hardly to be expected 
that the English people should fight the Lords en- 

[122] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

tirely upon the Irish question — thus shelving all 
British questions for several sessions — but once 
the constitutional struggle had begun there was 
hardly anything more important than that Ire- 
land should take her part. 

Proceeding to deal with the cry of separation, 
he declared that "to talk about Ireland separat- 
ing from the Empire is the most utter nonsense. 
We are not asking for separation ... I say to 
the English democracy, in all seriousness, what 
we want is peace between the two countries. We 
have none of these heroic ambitions and hare- 
brained ideas. Our ideas and our ambitions are 
humbler. We simply want the people to turn the 
energies and abilities which are to-day dissipated 
in this horrible racial contest between England 
and Ireland to the prosaic work of advancing 
the material and moral and educational eleva- 
tion of our own people at home. We know that 
it cannot be done by outsiders. The whole his- 
tory of the Empire shows the same in every part 
of the world. We simply ask for permission 
quietly to attend to our own business in our own 
way." 

The result of the election left the balance of 
power in the new Parliament in Mr. Redmond's 
hands, and immediate occasion arose for his use 
of this dominating position. Mr. Asquith's dec- 

[123] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

larations during the election campaign had been 
very generally interpreted as meaning that he 
had obtained guarantees from the King for the 
ending of the Lords' veto, and that he would pro- 
ceed at once to deal with the question. In his 
opening speech of the session, on February 21st, 
1910, however, the Prime Minister announced 
that not only had he no such guarantees, but that 
in his opinion it would have been improper and 
unconstitutional for him to ask for them; and 
he indicated that the Government was contem- 
plating rather a reform of the House of Lords 
than a limitation of its veto. For the National- 
ist Party the destruction of the veto was, of 
course, all important, and Mr. Redmond lost no 
time in bringing the situation under his control. 
Speaking at a banquet given to him and his col- 
leagues at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin by the 
Lord Mayor some ten days before the meeting 
of Parliament and Mr. Asquith's announcement, 
but when the Government's intention to put re- 
form of the Lords before the veto was already 
known, Mr. Redmond asked, so far as Ireland 
was concerned, for a free hand and for security 
from any danger of being stabbed in the back. 
Then he bluntly declared that, unless the Gov- 
ernment was prepared to proceed at once with the 

[124] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

limitations of the Lords' veto, he and his party 
would refuse to pass the Budget. 

This blunt declaration at once transformed the 
political situation. The Radical wing of the Lib- 
erals and the Labour Party, who had been disap- 
pointed and indignant at the Government's atti- 
tude towards the Lords, but had lacked a strong 
spokesman, at once rallied behind Mr. Redmond 
and took up with enthusiasm his slogan of "No 
Veto; No Budget." On the meeting of Parlia- 
ment and Mr. Asquith's announcement, Mr. Red- 
mond personally served notice on the Government 
that, unless it was prepared to alter its policy, it 
would not have the support of the Irish Party in 
passing the Budget. The debate was immediately 
adjourned, and a political crisis of three weeks' 
duration followed. 

Finally the Government capitulated to Mr. 
Redmond. Sir Edward Grey and the other Min- 
isters who had favoured the policy of reform 
for the House of Lords had in the meantime come 
to see that the only alternative to accepting his 
demand, in view of the Radical and Labour sup- 
port of his attitude, was the complete disaster of 
the Coalition. On March 29th, accordingly, Mr. 
Asquith announced that the Government would 
at once take up the question of the veto, and 
leave the question of the reform of the Lords 

[125] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

over to another session. The Parliament Bill was 
published a few days later, and was carried 
through the House of Commons on April 14th. 
Not until then did Mr. Redmond agree to pass the 
Budget. The Parliament Bill limiting the Lords' 
veto was passed by the House of Commons after 
a very bitter debate, in which the Unionist Party 
violently denounced Mr. Redmond's share in the 
transaction. 

Mr. Harry Jones, the Parliamentary journal- 
ist, thus described Mr. Redmond's part in this 
chapter of political history : "It happened that the 
Nationalists held the keys of the situation. The 
1909 Budget, rejected by the Lords, had not yet 
been passed into law. It had to be reintroduced 
into the House of Commons, and it could not go 
through that House without the concurrence of 
the Nationalist members. 'No Veto, No Budget/ 
was the policy of the Nationalist leader. This be- 
came crystallised into a policy expressing Liberal 
no less than Nationalist conviction. Through 
these early troubled weeks of the new Parliament 
Mr. John Redmond played a statesmanlike role. 
Amid the shifting sands of doubt and uncertainty 
he stood firm as a rock, and became the rallying- 
point for Liberal opinion in and out of Parlia- 
ment. Mr. Redmond's post-bag in these days was 
heavy with letters from leading Liberals in all 

[126] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

parts of the country expressing grateful appre- 
ciation of his steadfast attitude. There can be 
no doubt that the Nationalist leader was a pow- 
erful factor in modifying the tactics of the Cabi- 
net, and in assisting the concentration of the 
whole Liberal army on the limitation of the 
Lords' veto." * 

From this point Mr. Redmond became the tar- 
get of furious attacks in the Tory Press, which 
represented the Veto campaign as being engi- 
neered for the purpose of carrying Home Rule — 
which was, of course, the case so far as Mr. Red- 
mond and his party were concerned. The prog- 
ress of the constitutional struggle was soon in- 
terrupted by the unexpected death of King Ed- 
ward on May 6th. One of the first acts of his 
successor was the summoning of a conference of 
party leaders with the object of finding an agreed 
solution on the position of the House of Lords 
with a view, to avoiding, if possible, the creation 
of new peers. The summoning of the conference 
coincided with a plea for a compromise on the 
Irish question put forward in certain sections of 
the English Press, notably by the Observer and 
the Times, and it was clear that the constitutional 
question and the Irish question remained insep- 

1 "Liberalism and the House of Lords." 
[127] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

arable. The expedient of a conference was not 
liked by the Nationalists, but they were to some 
extent reassured by the inclusion of Mr. Birrell 
among the Liberal representatives. The confer- 
ence, after a lengthy session, finally broke up 
without achieving any result, and it was common- 
ly understood that the Irish question — which was, 
of course, closely involved in the question of con- 
stitutional reform — was a prime cause of its fail- 
ure. Mr. Redmond in the meantime had taken 
advantage of the suspension of the controversy 
to pay a visit to the United States, where in the 
autumn he attended a Convention of the United 
Irish League of America in Chicago and had 
an enthusiastic reception from the Irish-Amer- 
icans. 

Almost simultaneously with his return it was 
announced on November ioth that the conference 
had failed to come to an agreement. A week 
later, when it had become evident that the House 
of Lords had no intention of passing the Veto 
Bill, Mr. Asquith announced that Parliament 
would again be dissolved without delay. In the 
debate following this announcement, which was 
received with very modified enthusiasm by the 
Government's supporters, Mr. Redmond took no 
part. Mr. Jones, from whom I have quoted 
above, thus describes the incident: "All through 

[128] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

the long debate Mr. Redmond (who had only re- 
turned from his American tour a few days be- 
fore) sat silent in his corner seat. Two dissident 
Irishmen, Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. Tim- 
othy Healy, did their utmost to make the Irish 
leader speak, but to no purpose. When the mem- 
ber for Cork said that 'the "dictator of England" 
was the "destroyer" of Ireland,' a smile over- 
spread Mr. Redmond's Roman features. Mr. 
Healy spoke like a statesman when he appealed 
to both political parties to use the present blessed 
opportunity for a national settlement of the Irish 
question. But the statesman was swallowed up 
by the partisan when he began to fling his darts 
at the Nationalist leader. Calm and imperturbed, 
Mr. Redmond listened to his caustic critic. In 
spite of provocation and misrepresentation, still 
he held his tongue. It is a great art to know 
when to be silent. Mr. Redmond's silence through 
all this long debate was more eloquent than 
words." 

Mr. Redmond's silence, of course, was due to 
the absence of assurances from the Government 
as to its attitude in the event of its success in this 
second General Election of 1910. He was still 
determined that Irish support of the Government 
should be conditional upon the question of Ire- 
land being taken up immediately the veto of the 

[129] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

Lords was destroyed. The required assurances, 
however, were soon forthcoming, and again the 
Irish voters in Great Britain were mobilised in 
support of the Government. In the Tory Press 
and on Tory platforms during the election Mr. 
Redmond was now more than ever the target of 
abuse. At this period there was coined for his 
benefit the soubriquet of "the Dollar Dictator," 
in reference to his American tour; he was de- 
nounced as having returned from the United 
States with his pockets filled with foreign gold to 
dominate British politics. The election, decided as 
much on the Home Rule issue as on that of the 
Veto, after perhaps the most violent campaign 
in British political history, resulted in a slightly 
increased majority for the Government — 126 as 
against 124 in July. The balance of power was 
still in Mr. Redmond's hands. 

A fortnight after the meeting of the new Par- 
liament on February 6th, 191 1, the Parliament 
Bill limiting the Lords' veto was introduced. It 
was finally passed through the House of Com- 
mons in the following May, and was accepted by 
the House of Lords after a statement of Lord 
Morley that if it were defeated the King would 
assent to the creation of enough new peers to 
carry it at its next presentation. "If Mr. Red- 
mond," said the writer of his obituary in the 

[130] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

Freeman's Journal in summing up the Veto 
struggle, "had no other claim to greatness or the 
gratitude of his countrymen than the part which 
he played in this gigantic struggle, he would be 
entitled to be regarded for all time as one of 
the greatest of our national leaders. For un- 
questionably it was due to him more than to any 
other man that the formidable power of the 
Lords was broken for ever." The claim cannot 
be regarded as excessive. 

Mr. Redmond's use of his victory, however, 
was the subject of no little criticism in Ireland. 
With the Parliament Bill passed and the power of 
the Lords broken, the road was at last clear for 
the introduction of the Home Rule Bill. During 
the remaining months of 191 1 Parliament in- 
stead devoted most of its time and attention to 
Mr. Lloyd George's Insurance Bill. Mr. Red- 
mond's critics in Ireland, besides objecting to the 
postponement of the Home Rule Bill, opposed the 
Insurance Bill itself, which was certainly not 
very popular in Ireland. It was warmly sup- 
ported, however, by one of his chief lieutenants, 
Mr. Devlin, whose special organisation, the An- 
cient Order of Hibernians, a political and secta- 
rian "friendly society," stood to gain greatly in 
power from the* Insurance Bill. 

Mr. Redmond was not very active in political 
[131] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

life during the year 191 1. He was suffering, 
perhaps, from a certain reaction after the strain 
of the past few years, and reserving his energies 
for the coming Home Rule struggle. In October 
he received a tremendous ovation in Dublin on 
unveiling the Parnell Monument. It may be re- 
marked in passing that the fact that the monu- 
ment bore on its base Parnell's somewhat trite 
remark that "no man could fix boundaries to the 
march of a nation" drew upon Mr. Redmond new 
charges of being a "separatist." His own words, 
however, stood on record — "Separation," he had 
said, "is impossible; and, if it were not impos- 
sible, it is undesirable." 

One of his few public utterances in Ireland in 
191 1 was made at Baltinglass on October 23rd. 
Here he told his audience that the Home Rule Bill 
was almost completed, and that in its principles 
and details it would be a Bill satisfactory to Ire- 
land. A short time after this meeting he met 
with a somewhat serious car accident near his 
home at Aughavanagh, and his health was im- 
paired for some time. His first public reappear- 
ance was at Mr. Churchill's meeting in Belfast 
in February, 19 12, to which reference is made 
in the next chapter. In the following April, im- 
mediately before the introduction of the Home 
Rule Bill, he addressed in O'Connell Street one of 

[132] 



TOWARDS HOME RULE 

the greatest Nationalist demonstrations that ever 
assembled in Dublin: over 100,000 people, it was 
estimated, were present. Mr. Redmond then an- 
nounced that the Bill would be "a great and ade- 
quate one," and added the prophecy that "We will 
have a Parliament sitting in College Green sooner 
than the most sanguine and enthusiastic man in 
the crowd believes." Rarely did a political proph- 
ecy appear better founded; rarely was the ful- 
filment of such a prophecy more completely frus- 
trated by unforeseen events than the fulfilment 
of this prophecy of Mr. Redmond's was destined 
to be. 



[133] 



CHAPTER VI 



THE HOME RULE BILL 



THE third Home Rule Bill was introduced in 
the House of Commons by Mr. Asquith 
on April nth, 1912. In his introductory speech 
the Prime Minister said that he had always pre- 
sented the case for Irish Home Rule as the first 
step to a larger and more comprehensive scheme 
of local self-government, and recommended the 
Bill as being framed with that end in view. 

Mr. Redmond's speech on the introduction of 
this Bill is interesting as defining his position in 
regard to several points in connection with the 
Anglo-Irish controversy. Dealing with the ques- 
tion of separation, he admitted that there had al- 
ways been a certain section of Irishmen who 
would like to see separation from England, but 
dismissed them as a small section who would soon 
disappear when Irishmen were given the manage- 
ment of their own affairs. "Mr. Parnell," he 
proceeded, "speaking in 1886, said he specifically 
accepted as final the settlement of the Irish de- 

[134] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

mand for a Statutory Parliament for Ireland. I 
say that Mr. Parnell was never a separatist, and 
that we stand in this matter precisely where Par- 
nell stood. We want peace for our country, and 
I say that Ireland is willing to accept a Statutory 
Parliament created by statute of this Imperial 
Parliament as a final settlement." 

In the matter of religious safeguards he stated 
his position in a sentence — 'Tut into the Bill 
whatever safeguards you like." Coming to the 
question of finance, he traversed the Tory argu- 
ment that England was being asked to pay for 
giving Ireland the privilege of managing her own 
affairs, and declared that in any case "it is an ut- 
terly unworthy point of view for the rich coun- 
try to take, when we are considering a great 
question of this kind, to haggle about the terms. 
If Home Rule is unjust and wrong, refuse it. If 
it is just and right, what consistent argument 
can you make founded upon a few paltry pounds, 
shillings and pence?" From the Irish point of 
view he expressed the opinion that, on the ques- 
tion of finance, this was a far better Bill than 
either that of 1886 or that of 1893. 

His reference to the reduction of the Irish 
membership at Westminster was especially in- 
teresting; it was amplified in his speech to the 
National Convention a fortnight later, to which 

[135] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

I shall refer in a moment. On this question, he 
said, he had a perfectly consistent record. "When 
under the Home Rule Bill of 1886 the proposal 
was made to exclude all Irish representation I 
agreed to it with great reluctance, and I looked 
forward to the time when Irish representatives 
would be called back with the other representa- 
tives of the United Kingdom in what would then 
be a real Imperial Parliament. The point I want 
to make is this — that until the system is com- 
pleted you must have a certain amount of abnor- 
mality in your proceedings here ; but the best way 
to meet any anomaly has, in my opinion, been 
undoubtedly taken by the Government in hav- 
ing a reduced number of Irish representatives in 
the House. For my part you might have reduced 
them more. . . . We also desire that we should 
be here under such conditions that it would be 
impossible for us to govern the decision on Scotch, 
Welsh, and English Bills. We are only brought 
here because it is necessary that this symbol of 
Imperial unity shall be maintained." 

The concluding passage of Mr. Redmond's 
speech may be quoted at length. "Viewing this 
Bill as a whole I say — and I speak for my col- 
leagues on these benches — this is a great meas- 
ure, and a measure adequate to carry out the ob- 
jects of its promoters. It is a great measure, 

[136] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

and we welcome it. This Bill will be submitted 
to an Irish National Convention, and I shall with- 
out hesitation recommend to the Convention the 
acceptance of this Bill. If I may say so reverent- 
ly, I personally thank God that / have lived to see 
this day. I believe this Bill will pass into law. 
I believe it will result in the greater unity and 
strength of the Empire. I believe it will put an 
end, once and for all, to the wretched ill-will, sus- 
picion and dissatisfaction that have existed in 
Ireland, and the suspicion and misunderstand- 
ing that have existed in this country with regard 
to Ireland. I believe it will have the effect of 
turning Ireland in time into a happy and pros- 
perous country, with a united and contented 
people. 

"I well remember the introduction of the Home 
Rule Bill of 1886. To-night another Prime Min- 
ister extends the hand of friendship to Ireland 
under much happier auspices. Ireland to-day is 
peaceable beyond record. She has almost en- 
tirely cast aside her suspicion and rancour to- 
wards this country, and England, I believe, to-day 
is more willing than ever before in history to ad- 
mit Ireland on terms of equality, liberty, and 
loyalty into the great community of nations which 
make the great Empire. From the great men of 
every self-governing colony of the Empire have 

[137] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

come messages all in favour of Home Rule, bless- 
ing this Bill, and giving encouragement to the 
right hon. gentleman who introduced it. I pray- 
earnestly that the Bill may pass, and that it may 
achieve the objects its promoters have in view, 
and that, in the beautiful words of the prayer 
with which the proceedings of the House are 
opened every afternoon: 'The result of all our 
councils may be the maintenance of true religion 
and justice, the safety, honour and happiness of 
the King, the public health, peace and tranquillity 
of the realm, and the unity and knitting together 
therein of the hearts of all persons and estates, 
the same in true Christian love and charity.' ' 

The National Convention to consider the Bill 
was held in the Dublin Mansion House on April 
23rd. In his speech to that assembly Mr. Red- 
mond fully made good his promise in the House 
of Commons that he would without hesitation 
recommend the acceptance of the Bill. He began 
his speech with the assertion that the introduc- 
tion of a Bill of the character of the Home Rule 
Bill was a complete vindication and justification 
of the policy which the Irish Party had pursued 
for three years in the face of unparalleled diffi- 
culties, and of much discouragement and even 
attack in Ireland. The Home Rule Bill, he de- 
clared, was the greatest and the most satisfactory 

[138] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

measure of Home Rule ever offered to the 
country. It was something far more valuable 
to Ireland than repeal of the Union ; for Grattan's 
Parliament was independent only in theory, but 
was dependent and impotent in practice, with its 
measures subject to the veto of the King and 
Council in England, and its Executive responsible 
not to the Parliament of Ireland, but to the Par- 
liament of England. Under the Home Rule Bill, 
on the other hand, Ireland would have for the 
first time an Executive Government dependent 
on the confidence of the Irish Parliament, which 
would have control, subject to a few exceptions, 
of every purely Irish affair. "Now," said Mr. 
Redmond, "mark the first result of that. Dub- 
lin Castle, with all its evil, blood-stained tradi- 
tions, disappears; that horrible system of anti- 
Irish, unrepresentative, centralised bureaucracy, 
which has misgoverned and tortured and ruined 
Ireland, crumbles instantly into dust, and the 
new Irish Executive will control every Irish board 
and every Irish department." 

The "reserved services" under the Bill Mr. 
Redmond divided into two categories. In the 
first of these he comprised "things which I say 
here to-day we never asked for and do not want" 
— the Army and Navy, foreign relations, coinage, 
and so forth. Under this heading he included 

[139] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

also the reservation with regard to religious as- 
cendency. These safeguards, he declared, were 
unnecessary; but, "though I believed them un- 
necessary, and though in a sense they are humil- 
iating to our national pride, still, so long as there 
were a dozen men of our race and kin who en- 
tertained honest fears on these subjects, I would 
be willing to put any conceivable safeguard in 
the Bill to lull their suspicions to rest." 

With regard to the second category of "re- 
served services" he pointed out that all of them 
that Ireland cared about would come with auto- 
matic precision under the control of Ireland with- 
in a comparatively short number of years. He 
thought that the reservation of the Savings Bank 
for a certain number of years would be useful in 
order to prevent a plot being set on foot to dam- 
age Irish credit and damage the Irish Govern- 
ment. Similarly he approved the reservation of, 
land purchase on the ground that it was only rea- 
sonable that w T hile the system of land purchase 
was being carried out by Imperial credit the Im- 
perial authority should insist on fully safeguard- 
ing the security for the loans; anything else, in 
fact, would bring land purchase, which he de- 
sired to see rapidly completed, to an absolute 
deadlock. 

Replying to objections taken in some quarters 
[140] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

to the nominated Senate, he repeated his personal 
conviction, from his reading of the history of 
the world, and especially the history of the Col- 
onies, that a nominated Senate was a more demo- 
cratic body than a Senate elected on a narrow 
franchise, provided always that three conditions 
were fulfilled — that the nomination should be for 
a short number of years, that a large proportion 
of the Senators should go out of office every two 
or three years, and that there should be a satis- 
factory provision as to a deadlock between the 
two Houses. All these three conditions were 
fulfilled in the Home Rule Bill. He added 
another reason why he was in favour of a nomi- 
nated Senate. This was that he wanted the Irish 
Second Chamber from the very start to be crowd- 
ed with men who had not been partisans of the 
National Party in the past at all — men of busi- 
ness, men of commerce, men representing the 
professions, the arts and sciences and literature, 
of Ireland, men having large stakes in the coun- 
try. "I doubt," said Mr. Redmond, "if they 
would be elected at the start, and I want to see 
them at the start." 

On the subject of the financial clauses of the 
Bill he was emphatic. "I stand here," he said, 
"to support and vindicate the financial clauses of 
the Bill. I say they need no apology from any 

[141] 



[THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

one. I say they constitute a good scheme, a far 
better one than the scheme in the Bill of 1886 or 
the Bill of 1893." Under it, he claimed, every 
penny of Irish taxation, no matter from what 
source, would be expended on the Government 
of Ireland; and in addition England had to pro- 
vide a large annual sum out of Imperial sources 
for an indefinite number of years. This period, 
he hoped, would be short, because "we want to 
pay our own way in this country, and it is hu- 
miliating to our national pride to receive any sub- 
sidy, even at the commencement, from England. 
We want to stand on our own legs; hence it is 
that I rejoice that this Bill provides machinery 
whereby, when through the increasing prosper- 
ity of Ireland the deficit disappears, Ireland will 
enter into an arrangement to pay her fair pro- 
portion of Imperial expenses, and we shall get 
absolute control of the collection of our taxes." 
The only thing Ireland had not got, he declared, 
was the general power of protection against Eng- 
land and the world, and he did not know that 
Ireland wanted anything of the kind. His own 
personal view was that such a power would be 
valueless to Ireland; in any case such a power 
clearly could not be got from a Free Trade Gov- 
ernment and Parliament. 

With regard to the reduction of the Irish mem- 
[142] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

bership at Westminster Mr. Redmond assumed 
that most of his audience would be glad to see no 
members in the Imperial Parliament at all, so 
that Ireland could be concentrated entirely on the 
Irish Parliament and Irish affairs. He admitted 
frankly that he was himself one of those who 
desired to continue to share in the governing of 
the Empire which Irishmen had taken a large 
share in building. He took the view, however, 
that the Irish members must not remain in the 
Imperial Parliament in such large numbers as 
to constitute a constant temptation for the discus- 
sion there of Irish affairs. On the other hand 
he pointed out that the Bill provided that when 
the Irish deficit disappeared, and the new finan- 
cial arrangement was to be made, the Irish mem- 
bers were to go back to the Imperial Parliament 
in their full numbers in order to decide upon that 
agreement. 

The Bill, he repeated at the end of his speech 
as he had said at the beginning, was a great Bill ; 
and as to the question of its amendment he 
claimed that the men on whose shoulders the Irish 
people had cast the responsibility of passing the 
measure into law and safeguarding it through 
the future must have the power of deciding for 
themselves, on the ground and in accordance with 
the exigencies of the situation, all such matters 

[143] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

of policy and tactics. Finally he declared: "I 
say to you that it is your duty to accept this Bill, 
not with grudging or lukewarmness, but with 
alacrity and enthusiasm," and moved a resolution 
accepting it. This resolution was passed unani- 
mously and with enthusiasm. A further resolu- 
tion, "recognising that the satisfactory character 
of the Home Rule Bill is due in large measure to 
the skill, sagacity, and statesmanship of Mr. Red- 
mond and his Parliamentary colleagues," left the 
question of proposing amendments entirely to his 
judgment and discretion. The Bill, in fact, was 
passed without substantial alteration. 

The Home Rule Bill was read a second time on 
May 9th. The concluding portion of Mr. Red- 
mond's speech on this occasion, assumes, in retro- 
spect, the character as it were of prophecy. "If 
I were an Englishman," he said, "judging this 
question solely from the point of view of foreign 
policy and military strength, I would say that 
Home Rule for Ireland was the most urgent step 
you could take for the safeguarding of the coun- 
try in the future. I contend that the Irish ques- 
tion, as an Imperial and even as a British con- 
cern, has grown in magnitude and urgency. 
Nearly four millions of Irishmen have gone to 
other countries (since the Union) where they 
have increased and multiplied and flourished ex- 

[144] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

ceedingly. To-day they and their descendants 
constitute a source of strength to the Irish cause, 
and a source of potential strength or potential 
weakness to this Empire. The Irish race have an 
influence in every English-speaking land in the 
world, the nature of which is not properly under- 
stood by many people in this country. Sir Ed- 
ward Grey (the Foreign Secretary) summed up 
the matter in these words: — 'The goodwill of 
the Irish race is worth having ; it counts for some- 
thing in every part of the world that you care 
most for.' " 

"I want to point out this," Mr. Redmond pro- 
ceeded in a memorable passage — "that that in- 
fluence has grown considerably in recent times, 
and the reason is that the citizens of Irish descent 
in the United States and in your own self-govern- 
ing Colonies have advanced immensely in mate- 
rial wealth, in education, and in political intelli- 
gence. That influence does not stand alone. 
Citizens of German birth and descent in the 
United States — a great community — have lately 
taken a leaf out of the Irish-American book. 
They too have found that, while becoming thor- 
oughly assimilated with American life and loyal 
American citizens, a certain separateness and 
solidarity in a racial sense gives them a power 
which they would otherwise lack. I ask the 

[145] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

House of Commons seriously to consider, when it 
comes to American relations with a Power to 
which German sentiment may be opposed, and 
from which Irish sentiment remains alienated, 
the joint influence of these two elements upon 
public opinion and action is a factor which every 
thoughtful Imperialist ought to bear in mind. 
For myself, all I do is to point to your recent ex- 
perience in treaty-making in America as afford- 
ing some side-light on the question. I conclude 
on this note — that the Irish question is an Im- 
perial one of the first magnitude and urgency, 
and that if in making ready for these events 
which you may have to face in the future you 
want to present to the world a spectacle of rare 
solidarity; if you want to draw your Empire in 
a single bond of sympathy; above all, if you want 
to remove the obstacles which stand in the way 
of that natural community and understanding 
which should exist between this country and the 
great English-speaking Republic of America, you 
have the means of doing it now by passing this 
Bill into law." It is unnecessary to stress the 
significance of this prophetic utterance of Mr. 
Redmond's in the light of after events. 

The Home Rule Bill was read a second time 
in May, 1912, and a third time in January, 1913. 
Between those dates occurred a memorable event 

[146] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

in the political history of Ireland — the signing of 
the Ulster Covenant on September 28th, 1912. 
The movement of organised resistance to Home 
Rule in Ulster which culminated in this event 
dated from a year before, when the Ulster Union- 
ist Council of four hundred members, represent- 
ing Unionist associations in Ulster constituencies, 
met in Belfast and resolved: (1) That it was 
their imperative duty to make arrangements for 
a Provisional Government of Ulster; and (2) 
That they hereby appointed a commission which, 
in consultation with Sir Edward Carson, should 
frame and submit a constitution for this Pro- 
visional Government. For a year nothing more 
was heard of the work of the secret commission; 
but the state of Unionist feeling in Ulster was 
sufficiently exhibited when, in February, 19 12, it 
was proposed that Mr. Winston Churchill, First 
Lord of the Admiralty, should address a Home 
Rule meeting in the Ulster Hall in Belfast. The 
Harbour Board refused to allow Mr. Churchill a 
reception as First Lord. The Ulster Hall — a 
public building — was seized and held for a week 
by a body of Orangemen, and Mr. Churchill was 
driven to hold his meeting in a football ground. 
Public emotion culminated on "Ulster Day," 
September 28th, 1912, when the Covenant, 
drawn up by a committee of five under Sir Ed- 

[147] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ward Carson, was signed by 218,000 men. The 
Covenant pledged the signatories to use "all 
means that may be found necessary to resist the 
present conspiracy" of Home Rule. The reli- 
gious character with which the proceedings were 
invested struck many observers as impressive, 
and a special correspondent of the London Times 
applied to them the phrase of an "offensive and 
defensive alliance with Divinity." 

Mr. Redmond, in common with the Govern- 
ment and the Liberal Party, refused as yet to 
take the Ulster movement very seriously. In his 
public utterances he professed to regard it as a 
gigantic piece of bluff. It is probable that, him- 
self a convinced constitutionalist, he had some dif- 
ficulty in believing that the Ulster leaders would 
translate their threats into action, and certainly 
that the Tory party in England — the "constitu- 
tional party" — would give the movement the open 
and organised backing without which it could 
have no hope of success. 

In the year 19 13, however, the situation 
changed. On January 31st the Ulster Unionist 
Council of four hundred announced the passing 
by them of a notable resolution: — "We ratify 
and confirm the further steps so far taken by 
the Special Commission, and approve of the draft 
resolutions and articles of the Ulster Provisional 

[148] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

Government this day submitted to us, and ap- 
point the members of the Special Commission to 
act as the Executive thereunder." During the 
year efforts were made to organise and equip as 
corps of Volunteers the members of Unionist 
Clubs which had long been formed throughout 
the Province. The strength of the Volunteer 
force during the year was estimated to increase 
to between 100,000 and 150,000 men. The force 
was equipped by the Provisional Government, 
with funds largely provided by English sym- 
pathisers, on a sumptuous scale. In December, 
19 1 3, it was reckoned that between 30,000 and 
40,000 rifles and 20,000 pistols had been sent into 
Ulster during the year. 

On September 24th the "Four Hundred" met in 
Belfast to decree themselves the Central Author- 
ity of the Provisional Government of Ulster, and 
its Standing Committee of seventy-six was de- 
clared to be the Executive Committee of the 
Provisional Government. Sir Edward Carson 
was appointed head of the Central Authority, 
with a number of Committees under him repre- 
senting all the attributes of a self-contained State. 
The Provisional Government was now ready to 
be called into full working order at the command 
of Sir Edward Carson. He had a little earlier 
in the year made the significant statement that 

[149] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

to his personal knowledge "the forces of the 
Crown were already dividing into hostile camps." 
Despite these sinister developments in Ulster 
Mr. Redmond still maintained his attitude of 
reserve and composure. His chief lieutenant, 
Mr. Devlin, urged the Government to pursue its 
way undisturbed by menaces from Belfast. The 
worst that could happen, he calculated, was riot- 
ing in Ulster on the day that Home Rule passed 
into law. On November 25th, 1913, however, 
there emerged an independent Nationalist reply 
to the Ulster movement. It took the form of a 
manifesto calling upon Irishmen to "maintain 
the rights and liberties common to all the people 
of Ireland." "A plan had been deliberately 
adopted by one of the great English political par- 
ties, advocated by the leaders of that party and 
by its numerous organs in the Press, and brought 
systematically to bear on English public opinion, 
to make the display of military force and the 
menace of armed violence the determining fac- 
tor in the future relations between this country 
and Great Britain." Therefore, if Irishmen "fail 
to take such measures as may effectually reject 
this policy, we become politically the worst de- 
graded population in Europe, and no longer 
worthy of the name of nation." Provocation had 
just been offered even to the most pacific of Na- 

[150] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

tionalists by speeches like that of Sir F. E. Smith, 
then Mr. Smith, comparing Nationalists with 
Covenanters, and asking with a sneer "were the 
former willing to fight for Home Rule." Such, 
proceeded the Nationalist manifesto, was the oc- 
casion, "not altogether unfortunate," which had 
brought about the inception of the Irish Volun- 
teer movement. "But the Volunteers, once they 
have been enrolled, will form a permanent ele- 
ment in the national life under a National Gov- 
ernment." 

The Irish Volunteer movement was started — 
it is a significant fact — quite independently of 
Mr. Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party. 
Its promoters, however, were not in the main ill- 
disposed towards his party or his policy. The 
promoters of the inaugural meeting of the Vol- 
unteers in Dublin were Mr. John MacNeill, Pro- 
fessor of Old Irish History at the National Uni- 
versity, and Mr. Lawrence Kettle, a brother of 
the late Lieutenant T. M. Kettle, a former mem- 
ber of the Irish Party in the House of Commons. 
Neither Mr. MacNeill nor Mr. Kettle had hith- 
erto taken any prominent part in politics, but 
both were known as strong Nationalists of the 
constitutional sort. Colonel Maurice Moore, a 
brother of Mr. George Moore, the novelist, who 
had served with distinction in the South African 

[151] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

war, put his military experience at the disposal 
of the new organisation; he was himself a sup- 
porter of Mr. Redmond. Some of those, how- 
ever, who had associated themselves with the 
foundation of the Volunteers, and notably Sir 
Roger Casement, were suspect in the eyes of the 
orthodox Nationalist. 

Colonel Moore, in the evidence which he of- 
fered to the Royal Commission on the Rebellion 
in 19 1 6, gave an interesting description of the 
composition of the original committee. "There 
were about two extremists, and four or five boys 
under their domination: these latter men were 
mild and quiet and by no means unreasonable. 
Five or six Sinn Feiners were in a separate group. 
They might be described as extreme Home Rul- 
ers ; they did not approve of the methods of the 
Parliamentary Party, but were not revolution- 
ists. . . . There were a few like MacNeill, Pearse, 
McDonagh, Plunkett, and O'Rahilly who be- 
longed to no special political party; they were 
idealists. The remainder of the Committee were 
moderate men, inclined to follow the Parliamen- 
tary Party." It will be interesting to note how 
some of the Sinn Fein party and some of the 
idealists gradually became extremists and merged 
with the Fenians. 

The attitude of Mr. Redmond towards this 
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THE HOME RULE BILL 

new movement was at the outset distinctly un- 
sympathetic. He did not openly oppose it, but 
neither did he support it, and it was without any 
encouragement from him that the movement de- 
veloped. This attitude of Mr. Redmond towards 
the Volunteers may be attributed to three main 
reasons. In the first place, and least important, 
was a certain jealousy natural in the leader of a 
disciplined party which consistently deprecated 
independent action in Irish politics. The party 
had not been consulted with regard to the new 
departure. In the next place, Mr. Redmond 
doubtless feared — and events were to justify his 
fear — that the organisation might develop along 
extreme lines. Certain passages in the manifesto, 
such, for instance, as that the occasion of the 
Volunteer movement (the arming of Protestant 
Ulster) was "not altogether unfortunate," to- 
gether with the statement that the Volunteers, 
once they had been enrolled, would form "a per- 
manent element in the national life under a Na- 
tional Government," were disquieting. Mr. Red- 
mond had accepted the Home Rule Bill as a final 
settlement, and the Bill expressly removed the 
right of maintaining armed forces from the 
power of the Irish Parliament. 

Finally, and most important of all, Mr. Red- 
mond objected to the Volunteer movement as a 

[153] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

strict constitutionalist, both temperamentally and 
politically. His own natural bent was opposed to 
extra-constitutional action; moreover, at this 
time the hopes of the Irish Party were entirely 
based on the alliance with English Liberalism, 
and Mr. Redmond therefore wished to act accord- 
ing to the most strict constitutional forms. Here, 
indeed, seemed to lie the whole moral strength 
of his and his party's position as against Union- 
ist Ulster and the English Tory Party, which 
were now definitely committed to a policy of 
armed threats and conditional rebellion. 

Despite the coldness of the Parliamentary 
Party, the Irish Volunteer movement proved ex- 
tremely popular. Large numbers of men were 
enrolled, and drilling became very general 
throughout the South of Ireland. Mr. Redmond, 
far too astute a political leader to attempt with- 
out strong reason to run counter to popular opin- 
ion and refuse to accept the fait accompli, rapid- 
ly came to the conclusion that, if the movement 
could not be suppressed, it must in the alternative 
be controlled. He proposed, therefore, that the 
Volunteer organisation should be brought into of- 
ficial relations with the political organisation by 
the co-option to its governing committee of suffi- 
cient "tried and true" Nationalists — that is, rec- 
ognised supporters of the Parliamentary Party 

[154] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

■ — to command a majority upon it. Twenty-five 
such substantial men he suggested that he should 
nominate himself. 

He did not carry his point as to the control of 
the Volunteers without some difficulty. It needed 
a threat, if his nominations were rejected, to re- 
gard the organisation as a body of factionists 
hostile to the Parliamentary Party to induce the 
original committee to accept them. Finally Mr. 
MacNeill and his friends accepted Mr. Redmond's 
ultimatum with what grace they could, and the 
organisation, now affiliated with the Party, 
worked under the new controlling body fairly 
harmoniously up to the outbreak of war, with Mr. 
Redmond as titular President of the Volunteers. 
He displayed at no time, however, any great in- 
terest in the movement. 

It is necessary to note here, since it was 
destined to play a very important part in the de- 
velopment of the situation after the outbreak of 
war, the growth and existence of a third armed 
force in Ireland besides the Ulster Volunteers 
and the Irish Volunteers. This was the body 
known as the Irish Citizen Army, whose forma- 
tion preceded that of the Irish Volunteers and 
was entirely distinct from them. "The Irish 
Citizen Army," it was stated by James Connolly 
in his paper, The Workers' Republic, in 19 15, 

[155] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

"was the first publicly organised armed citizen 
force south of the Boyne. Its constitution pledged 
and still pledges its members to work for an 
Irish Republic and for the emancipation of la- 
bour." 

The year 1908 had marked the entrance of a 
new factor into Irish Nationalism — Labour 
under the leadership of James Larkin, who found 
in the Dublin slums a fertile ground for breeding 
the propaganda of revolutionary industrialism. 
Larkin's labour policy culminated in the great 
Dublin strike of the winter of 19 13, and it was 
during this stormy episode that the Irish Citizen 
Army, an armed body of working-men, was first 
formed. At this time the labour movement was 
not yet so strongly invested with a Nationalist 
character that it could claim any support from 
political Nationalism, and the ordinary lines of 
industrial division were observed in the strike. 
The employers' leader — who finally succeeded in 
breaking the strike at the cost of creating in the 
Dublin slums a bitterness of discontent which 
was to contribute powerfully towards the insur- 
rection of 1916 — was Mr. W. M. Murphy, for- 
merly a Nationalist member of Parliament but 
now, through his newspaper, the Irish Indepen- 
dent, one of the bitterest critics of Mr. Red- 

[156] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

mond's policy. 1 The Ancient Order of Hiber- 
nians, a sectarian "friendly society" organised by 
Mr. Devlin in the interests of the Parliamentary 
Party, violently opposed the strike, largely on ac- 
count of the anti-clericalism attributed to James 
Larkin. 

The attitude of Mr. Redmond and the Party as 
a whole towards the strike was one of strict neu- 
trality. Politically, between the fact that the pro- 
tagonist of the employers was Mr. Murphy, and 
the fact that the taint of anti-clericalism — from 
which in earlier years he had not himself been 
altogether free — clung about Larkin, Mr. Red- 
mond's position was very difficult, and strict neu- 
trality was, perhaps, the only possible policy 
which he could adopt for the party. Personally 
his sympathies as a man always humane were 
probably engaged on the side of the strikers; and, 
though as a believer in reformative rather than 
revolutionary means he must strongly have dep- 

1 The attitude of Mr. Murphy was roughly that of the "All-for- 
Ireland" group ; it was more especially identified with that of Mr. 
T. M. Healy. The main point of this criticism, as it was after- 
wards set forth by Mr. William O'Brien, was that up to a certain 
point the consent of Unionist Ulster was perfectly negotiable, and 
should have been sought at the time when the Ulster men's op- 
position was treated with derision by the Party ; and that, if such 
consent were honestly sought and unreasonably withheld, the 
Party should have pressed for a general Election which would 
give the Government a popular mandate to nip the Carsonite 
movement in the bud. 

[157] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

recated their methods, his shrewd political in- 
stincts must at the same time have satisfied him 
that, on any far-seeing view of affairs, Mr. Mur- 
phy's determination to break the strike by sheer 
process of starvation was a calamitous blunder. 
In labour affairs generally Mr. Redmond's atti- 
tude, in normal conditions, would have been of 
much the same complexion as what is known in 
England as "Tory democracy." His connection 
with the great strike — or rather his aloofness 
from it — is noted here because the rising of 1916, 
whose reactions were to wreck his policy so far 
as his own life-time was concerned, may be re- 
garded in large measure as a direct sequel to the 
labour upheaval in Dublin in the winter of 191 3. 
It would be tedious, and it is unnecessary, to 
follow in detail Mr. Redmond's part in the Par- 
liamentary struggle over the Home Rule Bill 
from the date of its first introduction in 1912 to 
the date of its final passage into law immediately 
after the outbreak of war in 1914. After a 
stormy session lasting throughout the whole of 
19 1 2 the Bill was carried through the House of 
Commons for the first time and, in accordance 
with expectation, was rejected by the House of 
Lords. Under the terms of the Parliament Act 
it had to be repassed by the House of Commons 
without alteration and again submitted to the 

[158] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

Lords in two successive sessions. This pro- 
cedure was adopted in 19 13, but without a repe- 
tition of the detailed debates of the previous year, 
and the Lords rejected it for the second time. In 
the Parliamentary struggle of the two years, of 
course, Mr. Redmond took a leading part on the 
Nationalist side, and won by his untiring zeal, 
sagacity and adroitness the reluctant admiration 
of his opponents as well as the enthusiastic ad- 
miration of his friends. In the Parliamentary 
arena, in a House of notable Parliamentarians, 
he filled a place such as perhaps not even Par- 
nell had occupied. 

In addition to his work in Parliament, Mr. 
Redmond conducted throughout these two years 
a continuous campaign in the English constituen- 
cies, meeting Unionist attack and consolidating 
Liberal support. It was said of him that some of 
his travelling feats during this campaign were of 
a kind to test the endurance of a younger man, 
but his robust constitution stood the strain well. 
In the great English centres which he visited, in 
London, in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, 
Leeds, Plymouth and other cities he was ac- 
corded enthusiastic receptions such as no Irish 
leader had ever before received and such as few 
English leaders of the day could boast. With 
all this he scarcely missed attendance at the 

[159] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

House of Commons on a single day when Irish 
interests were under discussion, being in the 
House from long before the beginning of each 
sitting until its close; for, as he said afterwards 
at a dinner at which he was entertained by his 
colleagues, he asked no man to do anything which 
he was not prepared to do himself. 

I may quote here an appreciation of Mr. Red- 
mond's gifts as a Parliamentarian written im- 
mediately after his death by the Irish Parliamen- 
tary journalist, Mr. Michael MacDonagh. 

"Mr. John Redmond was a great Parliamen- 
tarian in every sense of the word. For many 
years he was one of the dominant and most es- 
teemed members of the House of Commons, 
largely because of his gifts of character and elo- 
quence. Were he not an Irish Nationalist he 
might well have aspired to be Prime Minister of 
England, such was his intellect, temperament, 
and character; or, had he devoted himself to the 
law instead of to politics, to be a Judge of the 
High Court or Lord Chancellor. In the House 
of Commons the figure and appearance of a man 
tell in the making of an enduring and true im- 
pression on the assembly. As the Nationalist 
Leader rose to speak it was at once seen that he 
had a striking presence. In habit or mien he had 
a tendency to portliness. The face was strong. 

[160] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

It is said that in the features of most people 
there is a hint of some animal or bird. The 
Roman nose and piercing eye of Mr. Redmond 
suggested the eagle. There was also something 
of the eagle's soaring flight in his lofty and sus- 
tained style of speaking. Indeed in recent years, 
since debating has assumed more and more the 
qualities of good conversation, Mr. Redmond 
might truly be described as the only orator in the 
House of Commons. His mode of speech was 
far removed, however, from the ornate, flowery 
and passionate, which somehow have come to be 
associated with Irish declamation. Nor, on the 
other hand, was it stiff or formal or severe like so 
much of the finest oratory of the British school. 
"Mr. Redmond's speeches were models of lucid 
and consecutive exposition. The diction was al- 
ways clear and unhackneyed, the reasoning terse 
and penetrating. There were also many pas- 
sages, most moving, expressive of feeling and 
emotion, appropriate to the subject. Mr. Red- 
mond was also a perfect elocutionist. The voice 
was melodious, of a fine compass, and well modu- 
lated. The speeches were made all the more tell- 
ing by the harmonies of a cultured delivery. 
What gave his oratory distinction and influence 
were its qualities of dignity, force and persua- 
siveness. Above all it was persuasiveness that 

[161] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

appealed most to the audience. It was the mark 
of Mr. Redmond's sincerity and earnestness. 
That surge of deep emotion, with its appealing, 
moving note, merging often into melancholy 
pathos, at once arrested the attention of the 
House, retained it throughout the speech, and 
won immense sympathy. He always had a large 
as well as appreciative audience. I have heard all 
the chief speeches made by Mr. Redmond in the 
House of Commons, and my memory of the 
scene is invariably the same — the figure of the 
Irish leader standing conspicuously at the gang- 
way corner of the top Bench on the Opposition 
side, swaying as he spoke, the voice resonant and 
musical, the Chamber crowded in every part with 
attentive and deeply interested members. 

"Mr. Redmond's direction was superb. He 
could lead, he could initiate and inspire policy, he 
could command obedience and discipline. As well 
as being a great Parliamentary debater he was a 
consummate Parliamentary tactician. He was 
imbued with the spirit of the rules, regulations, 
and usages of the House of Commons, and 
understood its idiosyncrasies. He well knew the 
way in which the assembly should be treated in 
order to gain his ends. Though he was disposed 
always to be conciliatory in disposition, and was 
never wanting in courtesy, he could take a strong 

[162] 



THE HOME RULE BILL 

line when he thought the occasion demanded it, 
and be unyielding in following it out. With his 
party his position as leader was unquestioned 
and unshakable, founded as it was on the confi- 
dence his followers had in his devotion to the 
cause, his watchfulness of its interests, and his 
fine qualities of intellect and character. 

"Mr. Redmond's skill as Leader and ability as 
debater were especially notable in the stormy ses- 
sions immediately before the war when the pass- 
age of the Home Rule Act to the Statute Book 
was constantly interrupted by scenes of excite- 
ment and confusion. He was most regular in his 
attendance. If he was not present at prayers, he 
always came in early during questions. How 
often in those days have I seen him appear 
through the swing-doors under the clock, a bunch 
of violets — his favourite flower — in the button- 
hole of his frock-coat, pass up the floor and bow 
to the Speaker before turning to the right to 
ascend the gangway to his seat. The Nationalist 
members had on the benches below the gangway 
at that time such neighbours as the extremist and 
most uncompromising Ulster and English Union- 
ists. Looking down from the Reporters' Gallery 
I have witnessed many exciting incidents which 
sprang from this propinquity of elements so an- 
tagonistic, restless and passionate. On such oc- 

[163] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

casions Mr. Redmond exercised a restraining in- 
fluence. He was all for order and decorum in 
the conduct of debate. Another of his charac- 
teristics was the close attention which he gave to 
the proceedings. While he sat in his place he 
always paid the man in possession the compli- 
ment of listening to what he had to say. Mr. 
Redmond, in small things, as well as things vital, 
was a great man." 

I need not supplement with the details of the 
political controversy in which he applied them 
this able and enthusiastic appreciation of the po- 
litical qualities which Mr. Redmond exhibited 
during this period. During that period, more- 
over, history was made, essentially, much less at 
Westminster than in Ireland. 



[164] 



CHAPTER VII 

REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

AT this point it is necessary to retrace our 
steps a little and consider the emergence 
in Ireland of an influence hostile to Mr. Redmond 
and the whole policy for which he stood. It was 
an influence destined in the end to wreck that 
policy so far as his own life-time was concerned; 
but it was an influence which was generally held 
in too little account and was regarded by him- 
self, perhaps, in too contemptuous a spirit until 
the very last years of his life — though, indeed, it 
was circumstances utterly beyond his control 
which then invested it with a novel, and for him, 
catastrophic importance. I mean the influence 
which, though the description, as will appear, is 
not strictly accurate, may for convenience' sake 
be comprised under the generic definition of Sinn 
Fein. 

In a speech in Ireland in the summer of 1907 
Mr. Redmond thus described the Nationalist 
movement and its needs: "A Parliamentary 

[165] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

party representing Ireland in the British Parlia- 
ment is as necessary, from some points of view 
is more necessary to-day than at any period since 
the Union; and further than that, I say that the 
conditions upon which such a party can be of 
value and can achieve victories for Ireland re- 
main to-day absolutely unchanged. 

"First of all, the party must be the mouthpiece 
of a united, organised, and determined people at 
home. The second condition without which no 
party in Parliament can be of any value is that 
it must be a united and pledge-bound party. Fur- 
ther than this, the party, to be useful to Ireland, 
must be an independent party. It must be inde- 
pendent of all political parties .... We 
have no alliance with the present Liberal Gov- 
ernment. We would make no alliance with them 
except upon one condition, and that would be that 
they would not only determine to introduce a full 
Home Rule Bill for Ireland, but that they would 
make it the first and paramount item of their 
policy. With reference further to the party, if it 
is to be useful it must be composed of honest, ca- 
pable men. In this matter the party is the result 
of the action of the Irish people themselves . . . 

"Now," concluded Mr. Redmond, "with such 
a party as I have described, united, pledge-bound, 
disciplined, independent of all English parties, 

[166] 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

composed of honest and capable men, and, above 
all, representing a determined, organised, and 
united people at home — with such a party it is 
my profound conviction that we can in the fu- 
ture, as we have done in the past, win great am- 
eliorative reforms for the people of Ireland; and 
further that we can, in a comparatively short 
space of time, win for this country the right of 
full national self-government." 

Such was Mr. Redmond's apologia for the pol- 
icy of the Parliamentary Party ; and it may be re- 
peated here that in making it he not only ex- 
pounded a political theory, but expressed an in- 
tense personal conviction. For he was always 
and above all else himself a "Parliamentarian," a 
convinced constitutionalist. He thought and 
spoke of all political, social, and economic griev- 
ances in terms not of revolution, but of reform, 
and "Parliamentarianism" was to him the lan- 
guage of all constitutional progress. Now the 
hostile influence which is conveniently described 
as Sinn Fein struck at the very roots not only of 
his policy, but of his whole habit of mind. It had, 
perhaps, apart from its purely Irish development, 
something in common with that contemporary 
European movement of impatience with, and re- 
volt from, "indirect" political action which finds 

[167] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

one of its expressions in the theory of Syndical- 
ism. 

This hostile influence traversed the entire basis 
of the constitutional movement as it was stated in 
the policy of the Parliamentary Party. It denied 
that this Party, taken on its own terms, was in 
fact independent of English political parties, and 
charged it with a subservience to English party 
considerations actively detrimental to the best in- 
terests of Ireland. It denied that the Party sys- 
tem in fact produced "honest, capable men," and 
charged it with making the discipline of the 
pledge binding the members of the party an in- 
strument of tyranny which at once imposed upon 
the electorate members whose only necessary 
qualification was complaisance in the leader's 
infallibility and stifled all independent political 
thought in that electorate. But, over and above 
such criticism of detail, as it were, it denied as a 
whole the validity of the Parliamentary policy 
revived and reorganised by Parnell and con- 
tinued and developed by John Redmond; and it 
proposed instead a new policy which, though in 
its essence revolutionary, did not contemplate re- 
liance upon actual physical force. 

"The fact should be borne in mind," said the 
Report of the Royal Commission on the Rebellion 
in Ireland in 1916, "that there is always a section 

[168] 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

of opinion in that country bitterly opposed to the 
British connection, and that in times of excite- 
ment this section can impose its sentiments on 
largely increased numbers of the people." As Mr. 
Birrell described it: "The spirit of what to-day 
is called Sinn Fein is mainly composed of the old 
hatred and distrust of the British connection, al- 
ways noticeable in all classes, and in all places, 
varying in degree, and finding different ways of 
expression, but always there as the background 
of Irish politics and character." It was the whole 
achievement of Mr. Redmond that, by reducing 
this spirit of irreconcilability to the minimum and 
inducing the mass of the Irish people to seek by 
peaceful means a constitutional compromise with 
Great Britain of the Irish national claim, he suc- 
ceeded in recommending that claim to the British 
democracy. Nevertheless the old spirit of ir- 
reconcilability remained, in Mr. Birrell's words, 
"always there as the background of Irish poli- 
tics and character," and capable of being brought 
to the surface again in circumstances conducive 
to its emergence. 

Mr. Redmond inherited the policy of constitu- 
tional compromise from Parnell. After the fail- 
ure of the physical force movement of the 'sixties 
— the Fenian movement — no alternative to Par- 
nell's policy offered itself to the Irish people. For 

[169] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

the short, sharp Parliamentary struggle predicted 
a pledge-bound party was formed, and the force 
of public opinion organised in support of its 
policy. But the Parliamentary struggle, in the 
event, was to be neither short nor sharp ; and, as 
it proceeded under Mr. Redmond's leadership 
after the Parnellite split, the very weapon of a 
pledge-bound party, formed by Parnell to wrest 
a measure of Irish autonomy from the Imperial 
Parliament, tended inevitably in some degree to 
cast Irish politics in an inflexible mould of uni- 
formity and to establish a particular and rigid 
standard of political orthodoxy. It would have 
required a more than human — certainly a more 
than Irish — capacity for discipline if the re- 
straints of this system in their turn had not 
tended to gall the more ardent spirits of Irish Na- 
tionalism. 

But this impatience with the restraints of the 
system — of "machine" politics, as its critics de- 
scribe them — were kept in the main within 
bounds. There were no formal secessions from 
the party beyond that of Mr. William O'Brien, 
Mr. T. M. Healy, and their group of "All-for- 
Irelanders," and this secession was more a mat- 
ter of personalities than of fundamental princi- 
ples. The distinctive tendency expressed itself 
rather in criticism of his tactical methods than in 

[170] 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

open revolt from Mr. Redmond's policy as a 
whole. The general strength of his position was 
buttressed principally by two factors — one, the 
lively recollection of the impotence to which the 
divisions at the time of the Parnellite split had 
long reduced the Nationalist movement; the 
other, the absence of any alternative to his policy 
except the broken and discredited weapon of 
physical force. 

Now, from the point of view of political strat- 
egy, the appeal of Sinn Fein consisted precisely in 
the fact that it did propose a policy which was 
neither a policy of constitutional action nor a 
policy of physical force. The policy of Sinn Fein 
was formulated in 1904 by Mr. Arthur Griffith 
in his book "The Resurrection of Hungary," in 
the forefront of which were printed the words of 
Sydney Smith: "It is impossible to think of the 
affairs of Ireland without being forcibly struck 
with the parallel of Hungary." In the preface 
to this book Mr. Griffith made it clear that he was 
setting out to show that the alternative to acqui- 
escence in British Government was not necessar- 
ily armed resistance. His object, as he stated it, 
was "to point out to his compatriots that the alter- 
native of armed resistance to the foreign Govern- 
ment of Ireland is not necessarily acquiescence in 
usurpation, tyranny, and fraud." 

[171] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

"A century ago in Hungary," wrote Mr. Grif- 
fith, "a poet startled his countrymen by shouting 
in their ears, 'Turn your eyes from Vienna or 
you perish/ The voice of Josef Karman dis- 
turbed the nation, but the nation did not appre- 
hend. Vienna remained its political centre until 
fifty years later. The convincing tongue of 
Louis Kossuth cried up and down the land, 'Only 
on the soil of a nation can a nation's salvation be 
worked out.' Through a generation of strife 
and sorrow, the people of Hungary held by Kos- 
suth's dictum and triumphed gloriously. The de- 
spised, oppressed, and forgotten province of Aus- 
tria is to-day the free, prosperous, and renowned 
Kingdom of Hungary. . . . Hungary is a na- 
tion. She has become so because she turned her 
back on Vienna. Sixty years ago Hungary real- 
ised that the political centre of the nation must 
be within the nation. When Ireland realises this 
obvious truth and turns her back on London, the 
parallel may be completed. It failed only when 
two generations back Hungary took the road of 
principle, and Ireland the path of compromise and 
expediency." 

In a hundred pages Mr. Griffith compressed a 
vivid sketch of the history of the Hungarian con- 
stitutional struggle against Austria from 1849 
to 1867 when, after Sadowa, the emancipation of 

[172] 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

Hungary was achieved and the Emperor Francis 
Joseph was crowned King at Pesth. "Hungary 
won her independence," he urged, "by refusing to 
send members to the Imperial Parliament at Vi- 
enna or to admit any right in that Parliament to 
legislate for her. As the ancient Hungarian con- 
stitution was revived, so could Irish independence 
again be won, as acknowledged in the English 
Renunciation Act of 1782. Austria illegally sus- 
pended that Constitution and declared it invalid. 
Dealt stood for eighteen years insisting that it 
was not abolished, since it could not be abolished 
save with the consent of the whole people of Hun- 
gary. He refused all compromise and ignored 
the laws passed for Hungary in defiance of the 
Constitution." It was inevitable, Mr. Griffith in- 
sisted, that such an attitude must baffle Austria 
or any other nation towards which it was as- 
sumed, and leave her no alternative to uncondi- 
tional surrender except government by the sword. 
Protesting against the policy of Mr. Redmond 
and the Parliamentary Party, Mr. Griffith quoted 
the adverse criticism which Beust, who arranged 
the Augsleich with Hungary, passed on Glad- 
stone's Home Rule Bill of 1886. Beust, in press- 
ing the analogy between the Irish and Hungarian 
questions, admitted that Austria would never 
have conceded Hungary's demand had Hungary 

[173] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

not made it impossible for her to refuse it by the 
policy she adopted and persisted in for eighteen 
years. England similarly would never concede 
Ireland's demands unless Ireland made it impos- 
sible for her not to concede them. Mr. Griffith's 
policy was to be a policy of passive resistance. 
The attendance of Irish members at Westminster 
should cease, since their attendance recognised 
the competency of the British Parliament to make 
laws to suit Ireland. A National Assembly 
should be formed in Ireland from the Irish repre- 
sentatives. Ireland should set up a consular 
agency of her own, as Hungary did, to secure a 
profitable market for Irish goods abroad. "The 
British Civil Courts" in Ireland should find their 
"supersession by the institution of Voluntary Ar- 
bitration Courts" such as the Young Irelanders 
projected and the Hungarians established. The 
Irish abroad, especially in America, would form 
a valuable auxiliary both by rendering aid to 
Irish industrial enterprises and thwarting the de- 
signs of British foreign policy, as the Hungarian 
exiles did from 1849 to l ^7- "It would of course 
be a principal duty to keep Irishmen out of the 
ranks of the British armed forces. In Hungary 
the County Councils saw so effectively to this that 
the Austrian army was rendered ineffective, and 

[174] 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

went to pieces in seven days before the Prus- 
sians." 

In conclusion Mr. Griffith wrote: "We have 
merely roughly indicated how the policy which 
made Hungary what it is to-day may be applied 
to Ireland. There is no doubt of the readiness of 
the people to follow. The people of Ireland are 
not less patriotic and not less intelligent than the 
people of Hungary. Three-fourths of their mis- 
fortunes are traceable to their pusillanimous, in- 
competent and sometimes corrupt leaders. An 
Irish Deak would have found in Ireland a sup- 
port as loyal and as strong as Deak found in 
Hungary. But an Irish Deak never appeared, 
and shallow rhetoricians imposed themselves on 
the people in his stead." And again: "One 
strong, honest man in Ireland in 1867, after the 
failure of the Fenian insurrection, apprehending 
the significance of the coronation of Francis Jo- 
seph at Pesth, could have rallied and led the coun- 
try to victory. Ireland did not produce him. Ire- 
land produced Isaac Butt, the apostle of compro- 
mise, who, by himself and his successors, has led 
the country to the brink of destruction." 

"The Resurrection of Hungary," the book 
which was the genesis of Sinn Fein, had an enor- 
mous circulation, and the preface to the second 
edition claimed that "no book published in Ire- 

[175] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

land within living memory had been so widely 
read." In the winter of 1905, the year following 
its publication, the first Sinn Fein convention was 
held in Dublin. For a time the new movement 
seemed to threaten Mr. Redmond's ascendency. 
It was in 1907 that its rise compelled him to make 
the apologia for the policy of the Parliamentary 
Party which was quoted at the beginning of this 
chapter. But after the first novelty of its appeal 
had worn off the movement languished, and its 
single experiment in contesting a by-election 
against the candidate of the Parliamentary Party 
certainly did not encourage Mr. Griffith's hopes 
of "the readiness of the Irish people to follow." 
Between 1907 and 19 12 some of the earlier ad- 
herents of Sinn Fein, despairing of its practical 
possibilities, drifted towards the neo-Fenianism 
nurtured furtively and ineffectively by the avow- 
edly revolutionary Irish Republican Brother- 
hood; while more returned to their belief in the 
policy of Mr. Redmond and the Parliamentary 
Party. 

Nevertheless, though by 19 12 Sinn Fein was a 
small society, making its limited appeal to a com- 
pany of writers and scholars, and to some extent 
to the smaller bourgeoisie of the cities, having 
lost what influence it once possessed as an active 
agent in Irish political life, its propaganda had 

[176] 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

still aroused a critical spirit and coloured the 
whole background of Irish political thought to the 
disadvantage of Mr. Redmond's policy. Mr. Ar- 
thur Griffith thus described the Home Rule Bill 
of 1912: "The definition of the third Home Rule 
Bill as a charter of Irish liberty is subject to the 
following corrections : — The authority of the pro- 
posed Parliament does not extend to the armed 
men or to the tax-gatherer. It is checked by the 
tidal waters and bounded by the British Treas- 
ury. It cannot alter the settled purposes of the 
Cabinet in London. It may make laws, but it 
cannot command the power to enforce them. It 
may fill its purse, but it cannot have its purse in 
its keeping. If this be liberty, -the lexicographers 
have deceived us . . . The measure is no ar- 
rangement between nations. It recognises no 
Irish nation. It might equally apply to the latest 
British settlement in a South Sea island. It satis- 
fies no claim of the Irish nation whose roots are 
in Tara, or the Irish Nationalism which Moly- 
neux first made articulate." When Mr. Griffith 
wrote this mordant criticism of the Home Rule 
Bill of which Mr. Redmond had secured the in- 
troduction, there may have been few Irishmen 
who called themselves Sinn Feiners, but there 
were many who were disposed to agree with his 

[177] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

contempt for the measure which Mr. Redmond 
claimed as the charter of Irish liberties. 

But it was in a more subtle fashion than found 
expression in the sphere of practical politics and 
to an extent quite incapable of measurement in 
terms of its direct and immediate political reac- 
tions, that the influence comprised under the gen- 
eric heading of Sinn Fein tended to undermine in 
an increasing degree the general ascendency of 
Mr. Redmond and his policy in the public life of 
Ireland. The rigid conditions of party disci- 
pline under which his policy was necessarily 
formed produced inevitably a certain vacuum of 
living political thought in Ireland ; and human na- 
ture, like Nature herself, abhors a vacuum. The 
political energies of Ireland were concentrated 
at Westminster, and public life in Ireland suf- 
fered in consequence a certain stagnation. As, 
upon the one hand, Irish politics pursued their 
stereotyped course, and as, upon the other hand, 
Irish idealism was slowly and gradually in proc- 
ess of revitalisation by those agencies which are 
known comprehensively as the Irish Revival, 
much of the youth of Ireland grew indifferent to 
politics, and sought an outlet for its energies in 
other directions. 

Apart altogether from its political aims and 
methods, the original objects of Sinn Fein had in 

[178] 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

them much that was calculated to attract the more 
thoughtful type of Irishman : in general the idea 
that Ireland should cultivate her own resources 
spiritual and material, and look for salvation 
from within, rather than depend upon Parliamen- 
tary intrigue and the chances and changes of 
English party life. While intellectually the Home 
Rule policy was to a large extent sterile, intel- 
lectually Sinn Fein was fertile ; and, having much 
in common with them, it gave an impetus to all 
those intellectual movements which, while none of 
them was inimical to the Home Rule policy of 
Mr. Redmond, competed with it with success in 
offering a romantic outlet which that policy did 
not offer. 

By a paradox easily intelligible, it was Mr. 
Redmond's very success in gaining what he 
rightly described as "great ameliorative reforms" 
for the people of Ireland which tended to under- 
mine the popularity of the constitutional move- 
ment as he directed it. The period of his leader- 
ship of the Parliamentary Party was a period of 
emancipation for Ireland. It was the period of 
the conclusion of the land war and the final re- 
covery of the land by the people in the successive 
Land Purchase Acts; of the measures for the 
betterment of social conditions such as the La- 
bourers' Acts and the establishment of the De- 

[179] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

partment of Agriculture and Technical Instruc- 
tion and the Congested Districts Board; of the 
grant of autonomy in local affairs by the passing 
of the Irish Local Government Act; of the im- 
provement in educational facilities and the re- 
moval of long-standing and serious Roman Cath- 
olic educational difficulties in the establishment of 
the National University of Ireland. 

All this material advance was accompanied by 
a profound stirring of national consciousness 
which found a manifold expression. The na- 
tional spirit, which had been for generations re- 
fused expression, flowered, with its partial eman- 
cipation in the material sphere, into an intense 
spiritual life. The generation covered by the 
active political life of Mr. Redmond was the gen- 
eration or the reincarnation of potent antique 
ideals and of equally potent modern ideals deriv- 
ing from them: of Standish O'Grady and the 
History of Ireland; Heroic Period, the recapture 
of the inspiration of Ireland's heroic age, the epic 
emotion of the past ; of the modern Irish literary 
revival of which, for all the diversity of form and 
method between himself and his offspring, Stan- 
dish O'Grady was the authentic father; of the 
Fays, and the dramatic movement, the Irish Na- 
tional Theatre and the folk-drama of Synge and 
Colum and their followers ; of Dr. Douglas Hyde 

[180] 




AT THE CI.ONGOWES CENTENARY, 1914 

JOHN REDMOND WITH HIS BROTHER WILLIAM (ON THE LEBT) AND 

HIS SON, WHLIAM ARCHER REDMOND 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

and the Gaelic League and the Language move- 
ment ; of "AE" and Sir Horace Plunkett and the 
co-operative movement which sought to re-create 
the old communal civilisation ; of the Irish indus- 
trial revival. 

Towards all, or nearly all, these movements 
Mr. Redmond adopted a sympathetic attitude. 
Only to one of them — the co-operative movement 
— did he take up, largely under the influence of 
Mr. Dillon, a hostile attitude, on the ground that 
it was, or might be, a "red-herring" drawn across 
the trail of Home Rule. Towards what has come 
to be called comprehensively the "Irish-Ireland" 
movement he was entirely friendly, but always 
within certain limits and with certain reserves. 
He was, within those limits and with those re- 
serves, a Gaelic League supporter. His own chil- 
dren were taught Irish. He was in full agree- 
ment with the revival of Irish as a spoken lan- 
guage: it was his efforts which were largely re- 
sponsible for getting it placed on a level with the 
classics in the Intermediate examinations. He 
was a keen admirer of Irish art and a stalwart 
upholder of the distinctive character of Irish 
genius. 

But in all this he lacked that touch of fanati- 
cism which distinguished the more ardent be- 
lievers in the ideal of "Irish-Ireland." If he ap- 

[181] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

posed "anglicising" influences in Ireland, it was 
only because he believed in the objective value 
of racial differences; and he was not prepared 
to go to the extreme of the "Irish-Irelander" 
who would expel every English influence and 
espouse every Irish influence solely because 
the one was English and the other was Irish. If 
he believed in Irish literature, he was not of that 
movement which would seek to dismiss the tongue 
of Swift and Burke; there were few Irishmen of 
his time who possessed a greater devotion to, and 
a greater knowledge of, the genius of Shake- 
speare. There was to him, perhaps, a trace of 
smugness and self-satisfaction, or of hysteria, in 
Sinn Fein on its intellectual side and kindred 
Gaelic societies. Mr. Redmond's mind was es- 
sentially realistic, not retrospective. He was a 
man of many intellectual interests, but not of 
those thinkers who "make thought their aim." 
A practical man, he had little use for thought in 
public affairs which was not the channel to ac- 
tion ; and he was unable to regard the cultivation 
of Irish genius as any substitute for, though it 
might be the complement of, his own policy of 
constitutional action. 

In the intense emotion of national expression 
which constituted the Irish Revival, there was, 
perhaps, inevitably, much of active resentment, 

[182] 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

in some of its manifestations, of any intrusion of 
internationalism. The Gaelic League, for exam- 
ple, tended increasingly to become an exclusive 
movement — a movement which, jealously safe- 
guarding that sense of nationality which it was 
designed to foster, suspicious of renewed as- 
saults upon it, in a passion of nationalism shut 
out rigorously any external influence which might 
weaken the impact of its creed upon the awaken- 
ing mind of the Irish people. It was a phase, com- 
mon to the development of all intellectual na- 
tionalist movements, which never tend to turn to 
jingoism unless they find their proper comple- 
ment in internationalism, which would in normal 
circumstances probably soon have been outgrown. 
But Mr. Redmond was naturally unsympathetic 
to it, and especially to the extreme anti-English 
bitterness which accompanied it. 

In the good, as distinguished from the bad, 
sense, Mr. Redmond was an Imperialist. He be- 
lieved in the British Empire, with all its faults, 
as an instrument of civilisation and progress 
whose existence was not incompatible with na- 
tional freedom. He believed that within the lim- 
its of the Empire Ireland's national aspirations 
could be fully satisfied. He was no less proud of 
the share which Irish swords had taken in build- 
ing the Empire than of the contribution which 

[183] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

Irish pens had made to the commonwealth of 
English literature. Mr. Redmond, indeed, was 
the first leader of Irish Nationalism who real- 
ised from personal observation the Imperial as- 
pect of the Irish question. His visits to the self- 
governing Dominions had satisfied him that, if 
the Irish question had become an Imperial ques- 
tion from the English point of view, the fact that 
it had become so from the Irish point of view 
also raised an entirely new set of considerations 
from those envisaged by the Sinn Feiner and the 
"Irish-Irelander." He could not admit the valid- 
ity of the full implications of a political theory, 
based upon an emotional nationalism unre- 
strained by political facts, which, pressed to its 
logical conclusion, must mean not only the com- 
plete separation of Great Britain and Ireland, but 
also the disruption of the Empire in which the 
Irish element is everywhere a factor with which 
to reckon. 

Mr. W. T. Stead has given in his character 
sketch of Mr. Redmond an impression by Mr. W. 
M. Crook — who made Mr. Redmond's acquain- 
tance in Dublin when they were both law stu- 
dents — which may appropriately be quoted here. 
"When I first met Mr. Redmond," he said, "I 
was more or less of a Separatist. He made me 
an Imperialist. I do not use the word to desig- 

[184] 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

nate an admirer of the gorgeous orientalism of 
Benjamin D'Israeli, nor yet a follower of the nar- 
rowly insular policy of an uneducated Birming- 
ham tradesman. John Redmond knew the Em- 
pire. His wife was an Australian, and even when 
I first met him he had been round the world. The 
great free communities, Canada, Australia, New 
Zealand, and even the United States, were to him 
in large part Irish estates. Irish blood and Irish 
brains had helped them to freedom and to pros- 
perity. It was a new point of view to us. I do 
not speak with authority, but I do say with some 
confidence that never, while John Redmond is 
leader, will the Irish Party consent to be deprived 
of their rightful share in the government of their 
Empire." This "Imperialism" of Mr. Redmond, 
combined with that antipathy to the extreme of 
the "Irish-Ireland" philosophy which derives 
from what his nephew, Mr. Redmond-Howard, 
has called "a certain 'Englishness' about him 
which appeals to the more sober-minded," was 
precisely that quality in him which Sinn Fein held 
anathema. 

To what extent Mr. Redmond's position was 
being undermined by Sinn Fein propaganda be- 
fore the war it is difficult to say, and perhaps 
scarcely relevant to consider; for the war intro- 

[185] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

duced into the Irish situation influences which 
completely transformed the situation. It may be 
said, however, that upon the definitely political 
side, superficially at least, it appeared to do his 
policy little material damage. It did assist pow- 
erfully in arousing a critical spirit, but it did not 
offer any acceptable alternative to the policy of 
the Parliamentary Party. Mr. Redmond's posi- 
tion in the country remained sufficiently secure, 
his following sufficiently numerous and upon the 
whole sufficiently disciplined, to enable him to de- 
vote his whole energies to the campaign for Home 
Rule without fear that the basis of his authority 
in Ireland would be cut from beneath him; and 
there can be little doubt that, had he succeeded 
in carrying that campaign to full success, and 
secured the bringing into operation of the Home 
Rule Bill, his achievement would have silenced 
almost all criticism of the imperfections of that 
measure and enabled him to enter upon his career 
as Prime Minister of a self-governing Ireland in 
the assured enjoyment of commanding popularity 
and prestige. 

In default of that success the effect of the in- 
fluence of the Sinn Fein and kindred movements 
upon Mr. Redmond's position was briefly this — 
that he was conducting a constitutional policy 

[186] 



REDMOND AND SINN FEIN 

in an atmosphere increasingly revolutionary. I 
use the word in its broadest sense, not in its nar- 
rower political sense. It is a facile view which 
would attribute to the "Irish Revival" movements 
any direct responsibility for the rising of 1916. 
But there may clearly be traced to them, or rather 
to the mood from which they sprung, an indirect 
and perfectly innocent responsibility for it. It 
implied the existence and growth of a revolution- 
ary sentiment colouring all the background of the 
political material through which Mr. Redmond 
sought by constitutional action to achieve his end. 
Mr. Redmond did not possess the revolutionary 
temperament. For that reason, and also because 
he was always concerned rather with the concrete 
facts of politics than with those abstractions 
which supply the deeper motive forces of polit- 
ical action, perhaps, he underestimated the poten- 
tialities of this revolutionary sentiment. "What 
is called the Sinn Fein movement," he said as late 
as the summer of 191 5, "is simply the temporary 
cohesion of isolated cranks in various parts of the 
country, and it would be impossible to say exactly 
what their principles are, or what their object is. 
In fact, they have no policy and no leader, and do 
not amount to a row of pins as far as the future 
of Ireland is concerned." As an estimate of the 

[187] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

superficies of politics and in its application to 
Sinn Fein, strictly regarded, this judgment was 
sound. But as an estimate of deeper political 
forces and of the influence of the revolutionary 
sentiment in general it was profoundly mistaken. 



[188] 



CHAPTER VIII 

REDMOND AND ULSTER 

AFTER this necessary and very relevant di- 
gression we may resume the story of Mr. 
Redmond's career at the point where that story 
was broken off. In an earlier chapter it was re- 
marked that it would be tedious, and indeed un- 
necessary, to follow in detail his past in the par- 
liamentary struggle over the Home Rule Bill dur- 
ing the year following its introduction — 1913 — 
when, under the terms of the Parliament Act, it 
had to be repassed by the House of Commons 
without alteration and again be submitted to the 
House of Lords. Upon the rejection of the Bill 
by the Lords in April, 1913, a great protest meet- 
ing was held in the Dublin Mansion House, and 
Mr. Redmond then asserted that, in spite of the 
Lords, Home Rule would be the law in fourteen 
months. In the same year he opened the new 
bridge across the Suir at Waterford, and so san- 
guine was he then of the success of the Home 
Rule cause that he declared: "I will not make 

[189] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

any prophecy, but perhaps the next time I am 
amongst you it will be to tell you that we have 
not merely won the ramparts, but that we have 
planted the flag in the citadel." During this year 
the organisation of armed opposition in Unionist 
Ulster proceeded apace. Simultaneously the Ul- 
ster Unionist leader conducted a platform cam- 
paign against Home Rule in England and Scot- 
land. Sir Edward Carson, the principal speaker 
at these meetings, was followed indefatigably in 
every town he visited by Mr. Redmond, who ad- 
dressed a rival series of meetings. 

The development of the Parliamentary situa- 
tion towards the close of 19 13 requires a some- 
what closer study. In the coming session the 
Home Rule Bill had to be submitted for the third 
and last time to the House of Lords, and this 
time, despite their rejection, must become law. 
During the winter of 1913-14, however, there 
were to be observed certain signs of weakening 
in certain Liberal quarters on the question of Ul- 
ster. A speech by Mr. Winston Churchill at 
Dundee, and a letter to the Press from Lord 
Loreburn, coupled with the changing attitude of 
some of the leading Liberal newspapers indicat- 
ed that a movement for compromise on the Ulster 
question was afoot. 

When the session of 1914 opened it became 
[190] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

known that at least two powerful members of the 
Cabinet were of the opinion that Ulster could not 
be coerced, and it appeared probable that, unless 
some concession were made to the Ulster Cove- 
nanters, these Ministers would resign from the 
Cabinet and thereby destroy it. This develop- 
ment created perhaps the most serious difficulty 
with which Mr. Redmond had yet been confront- 
ed. It was certain that a policy of concessions to 
the Ulstermen would be highly unpopular in Ire- 
land. On the other hand, the alternative — the 
break-up of the Cabinet — involved the wreck of 
all the work of the previous four years and the 
indefinite postponement of the victory of the 
Home Rule cause on the very eve of its realisa- 
tion ; for a dissolution meant that the Home Rule 
Bill would cease to come under the benefit of the 
Parliament Act, and a General Election, with the 
democratic forces disorganised, seemed to offer 
a very uncertain prospect of recovering the lost 
ground within a reasonable time. 

In this dilemma Mr. Redmond finally decided 
to accept the policy of concession, within certain 
severe limits and upon certain definite conditions. 
The proposal of the Government, to be embodied 
in an Amending Bill, was that each Ulster county 
should have the option of voting itself out of the 
operation of the Home Rule Bill for a period of 

[191] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

three years (this period was finally extended to 
six years) at the end of which time they would all 
automatically come within the jurisdiction of the 
Irish Parliament. Before making his decision, 
Mr. Redmond commissioned Mr. Devlin and 
others of his colleagues to go to Ulster and learn 
on the spot the views of the Ulster Bishops and 
of lay Ulster Nationalists upon the proposal. On 
their return they reported to him that the Na- 
tionalists of Ulster, clerical and lay, were willing 
to acquiesce in the concessions being offered. 

Thereupon, Mr. Redmond, on the introduction 
of the Government's Amending Bill, declared 
that he and his colleagues, while protesting 
against the proposal, which he described as "the 
extremest limit of concession," would be prepared 
to accept the Bill, upon the strict condition that it 
was accepted by the Unionists as a final settle- 
ment of the controversy: otherwise, he made it 
clear, his party would reserve the right to oppose 
the Bill in its later stages. The Bill, in fact, was 
not so accepted by the Ulster party, and the vol- 
unteers in Ulster continued to arm and drill. The 
Government nevertheless proposed to proceed 
with both the Home Rule Bill and the Amending 
Bill, despite the fact that the latter satisfied nei- 
ther party in Ireland. 

At this point, however, the centre of gravity 
[192] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

shifted suddenly from Westminster to Ireland. 
On March 24th, 1914, the Army Council ad- 
dressed a letter to Sir A. Paget, the General Offi- 
cer Commanding-in-chief the Forces in Ireland, 
ordering him to take measures which, on the face 
of them, appeared to be dictated merely by a de- 
sire to protect the military stores collected in cer- 
tain Army mobilisation centres in Ulster lest the 
Volunteers should be tempted to appropriate 
them. Their purpose was apparently defensive, 
not offensive. The Covenanters and their sympa- 
thisers, however, leapt to the conclusion that they 
portended the coercion of Ulster. 'The forces 
of the Crown," Sir Edward Carson had stated 
the previous year according to his personal 
knowledge, "are already dividing into hostile 
camps." The truth of his statement was quickly 
proved. On March 20th General Paget, who had 
in the meantime set in motion the measures or- 
dered in the Army Council's letter of March 14th, 
wired to the War Office reporting that the officer 
commanding the 5th Lancers (stationed in Dub- 
lin) stated that almost all the officers of that regi- 
ment were resigning their commissions, and that 
he feared the same conditions existed in the 10th 
Lancers and that the men would refuse to move. 
He regretted to report also that "Brigadier-Gen- 
eral Gough and fifty-seven officers 3rd Cavalry 

[193} 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

Brigade (stationed at the Curragh) prefer to ac- 
cept dismissal if ordered North." General Gough 
and his officers at the Curragh, it appeared, had 
been in telephonic communication with the Lan- 
cers' officers in Dublin, and had concerted this re- 
fusal to obey the orders to move to Ulster with 
their units. 

The affair, which came to be known as the 
"Curragh Mutiny," precipitated a new "crisis" 
momentarily transcending the Home Rule issue 
itself. General Gough was summoned to Lon- 
don, and there obtained from some members of 
the Army Council a signed guarantee that he and 
his brother officers should in no circumstance be 
used to force Home Rule on the Ulster people. 
Mr. Asquith himself assumed the office of Secre- 
tary of State for War, and the "crisis," with 
some resignations from the Army Council, grad- 
ually died away. A new factor, however, had al- 
ready entered into the situation. The Unionist 
Party leaders upheld the right of Army officers 
in such circumstances to refuse to obey orders. 
'There is not," said Mr. Walter Long in the 
House of Commons, "anybody on that (the Gov- 
ernment) side of the House who has not admitted 
that the impossible has been arrived at, and that 
you will never be able to use the full forces of the 
Crown to enforce the Bill upon Ireland." 

[194] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

Mr. Redmond took no part in the debates in 
Parliament on the "Curragh Mutiny," but he did 
not leave his attitude in any doubt. It was ex- 
pressed with a warmth of language unusual in 
him in the following message which he cabled the 
Australian supporters of the Home Rule cause: 

"The Ulster Orange plot is now completely re- 
vealed, Carson and his army have not, and never 
had, the slightest intention of fighting as a fight- 
ing force. Against the regular troops they could 
not hold out a week. The plan was to put up the 
appearance of a fight, and then, by society influ- 
ences, to seduce the Army officers, and thus de- 
feat the will of the people. The action of the 
commanders of some crack cavalry regiments, 
officered by aristocrats, has now fully disclosed 
the plan of campaign. The issue raised is wider 
even than Home Rule. It is whether the Govern- 
ment are to be brow-beaten and dictated to by the 
drawing-rooms of London, seconded by officers 
who are aristocrats and violent Tory partisans. 
The cause of Irish freedom in this fight has be- 
come the cause of popular freedom, indeed of lib- 
erty, throughout the world. It is impossible to 
doubt the result of such a fight. The second read- 
ing of the bill will be taken on Monday, and pro- 
ceeded with until it finds a place on the Statute 
Book." 

[195] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

The second reading debate took place on April 
6th and Mr. Redmond supported the motion in a 
speech of singular moderation. He had earlier, 
at a St. Patrick's Day banquet in London, de- 
clared emphatically, in reference to the Ulster 
question, that "if force were interposed it would 
be met by force." All the time, however, he had 
asserted his influence to keep the situation so far 
as possible under control. For example, just be- 
fore "the Curragh Mutiny," when rumours were 
afloat and the position in Ulster was tense it was 
proposed to hold a National Volunteer demon- 
stration in Derry; Mr. Redmond telegraphed to 
the organisers urging them, in the interests of 
the National cause, to have the meeting aban- 
doned. 

In his speech on the second reading of the 
Home Rule Bill he stated his position with regard 
to. Ulster frankly. He said that candidly he had 
not believed, and did not now believe, in civil war 
in Ulster. He did not say that the opposition to 
the Bill in Ulster was not real; he knew it was. 
But he believed that when it became the law of 
the land a change would come. He did not shut 
his eyes to the possibility of disturbance in Ul- 
ster. But the House of Commons owed a duty 
to itself, owed a duty to Ireland, and owed a duty 
to the people of Great Britain, to pass the Bill 

[196] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

and not allow itself to be deterred by threats of 
armed resistance to the law. The Bill was duly 
read a second time. The capital fact remained, 
however, that the Government had shirked a radi- 
cal solution of the Army crisis, and that Mr. Red- 
mond, in his references to Ulster, did not take 
account of the new factor in the situation which 
that crisis had evoked. 

The excitement attending the "Curragh Mu- 
tiny" was still high when another startling event 
occurred in Ireland. On April 24th, under cover 
of a test mobilisation of the Ulster Volunteers, a 
huge consignment of German Mauser rifles, esti- 
mated to number forty thousand, was landed at 
Larne, County Antrim, and at Bangor and Don- 
aghadee, County Down. A proclamation had 
been issued in December, 19 13, forbidding the im- 
portation of arms into Ireland. Its issue was 
strongly resented by the National Volunteers, 
who saw cause for suspicion in the fact that the 
Ulster Covenanters should have been allowed by 
the Government for a year to equip themselves 
unhindered, while an obstacle was at once put in 
the way of Southern Volunteer armament. It 
was at this time that Mr. Redmond asserted his 
control over the National Volunteers. 

Without the rise of the National Volunteers 
there would have been no Proclamation prohibit- 

[197] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ing the importation of arms into Ireland; with- 
out that Proclamation there would have been no 
opportunity for the Covenanters in Ulster to 
show how great and menacing was their strength. 
The gun-running at Larne and other parts of the 
North was an event of the first political impor- 
tance. It offered a decisive challenge to the Gov- 
ernment; and the Government did not accept the 
challenge. The Ulster Covenanters had pro- 
fessed their indifference to the prohibition upon 
the importation of arms, boasting that they were 
already well equipped and would have no diffi- 
culty in procuring further arms if necessary. 

The departure of the yacht "Fanny" from 
Hamburg carrying the German rifles was an- 
nounced in the newspaper three weeks before its 
arrival at Larne on April 24th. All the Volun- 
teers were called out under cover of a test mobi- 
lisation. They guarded Belfast, where a decoy- 
boat was sent in to mislead the police, and sur- 
rounded Larne, Bangor, and Donaghadee. The 
affair from the Nationalist point of view was thus 
described by Mrs. J. R. Green. "At the famous 
gun-running into the Irish harbour the Provision- 
al Government took possession of the King's high- 
roads, ran telegraph wires to earth, confined the 
police to barracks, seized harbours, locked up of- 
ficials of the Custom, rounded up suspected Na- 

[198] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

tionalists and locked them in a farm, and gener- 
ally broke the public laws of sea and land. Ad- 
mirals, generals, officials of the coastguard, of 
police, of the post office and telegraph service, 
all connived at the lawless deeds. Public law 
was suspended." Evidently at Larne the Provi- 
sional Government not merely claimed, but exer- 
cised, the right to rebel. The fact was empha- 
sised on April 29th in a speech by Major Craw- 
ford, the Captain of the "Fanny," to a Unionist 
Club in County Down: "If they were put out of 
the Union ... he would infinitely prefer to 
change his allegiance right over to the Emperor 
of Germany, or any one else who had got a proper 
and stable government." x 

England was startled by the Ulster Covenan- 
ters' exploit. Mr. Asquith described the gun-run- 
ning as a "gross, unprecedented outrage," and 
declared that the Government would "take with- 
out delay appropriate steps to vindicate the au- 
thority of the law." No such steps, however, were 
taken. Some troops were moved up to the North 
of Ireland and two gun-boats were sent to Bel- 
fast Lough. The imported rifles had in the mean- 
time been distributed and concealed throughout 
the province. Ulster preserved an attitude of 
calm and the troops and sailors were effusively 

1 "Ourselves Alone in Ulster." 

[199] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

welcomed by the people. It was clear, however, 
that any action against the ringleaders of the Vol- 
unteer movement or any attempt to recover the 
hidden arms would provoke an immediate and 
ardent resistance. 

The causes of the Government's failure "to 
vindicate the authority of the law" were two. In 
the first place there was the evident fact that it 
could not depend upon the Army. Doubtless suf- 
ficient forces could have been employed to over- 
come the Ulstermen; but the mere use of them, 
in Lord Roberts' words, would "split the Army 
from top to bottom." In the next place there was 
the fact that Mr. Redmond and Mr. Dillon them- 
selves opposed reprisals. The Cabinet was itself 
divided between forcing the issue and letting mat- 
ters slide ; a majority, perhaps, favoured the latter 
course; and the attitude of the Nationalist lead- 
ers probably determined it in this course. 

This attitude of Mr. Redmond and Mr. Dillon 
(which did not become known until later) ap- 
peared remarkable, but it was easily explained. 
In general Mr. Redmond was not in the habit of 
taking his fences before he came to them, and he 
doubtless preferred to let the situation develop 
normally, trusting that the development would 
in some way turn favourably for his hopes. But, 
more particularly, the Nationalist leaders were 

[200] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

now themselves (though very much against Mr. 
Redmond's will) involved in illegal associations 
in the South of Ireland; and, if they had demand- 
ed punishment for the Ulstermen, they would 
have left themselves open to the charge — and it 
would certainly have been brought by critics on 
their own side — of conspiring against the exist- 
ence of the National Volunteers, whose spokes- 
men expressed the greatest admiration for the 
daring and cleverness of the law-breakers of Ul- 
ster. 

The circumstances attending the "Curragh 
Mutiny" and the Larne gun-running destroyed 
the hopes that Ulster Unionism might develop 
along anti-English lines. The same circum- 
stances showed that, in the Government's view, 
it was not practicable to employ the forces of the 
Crown to coerce Unionist Ulster. Casement, in 
his speech from the dock at his trial two years 
later, held that these events gave proof that Brit- 
ish military power was always in the last resort 
the enemy of Irish Nationalism. The success of 
the "Curragh Mutiny" and the frank delight of 
the English upper classes at the equally successful 
coup at Larne were widely regarded in Ireland as 
supplying convincing proof that Ireland could ex- 
pect no fair play from those who really ruled in 
England. Unquestionably these events contribut- 
ed] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ed towards promoting a revolutionary sentiment 
in Ireland and shook Mr. Redmond's position in 
the country by exposing the weak spot in his 
policy of alliance with English Liberalism. 

On the other hand he gained popularity from 
his association with the National Volunteers. 
The Committee of that body issued in June a 
manifesto urging the immediate withdrawal of 
the Proclamation prohibiting the importation of 
arms into Ireland, and declaring that the action 
of the Government had placed in the way of 
Irishmen favourable to national autonomy ob- 
stacles which "admittedly are inoperative in the 
case of those opposed to Irish self-government," 
that "the right of free people to carry arms in 
defence of this freedom" was "an elementary part 
of political liberty," and that the denial of that 
right was "a denial of political liberty and consist- 
ent only with a despotic form of government." 
The concluding passage of the manifesto, which 
was signed by Mr. John MacNeill and Mr. L. J. 
Kettle, showed that the relations between the Vol- 
unteer organisation and Mr. Redmond were 
closer and more genial. "We are glad to recog- 
nise," it ran, "that the time has come when the 
members of the Irish Parliamentary Party, with 
Mr. John Redmond at its head, have been able, 
owing to the development of the Irish Volunteer 

[202] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

Organisation on sound and well-defined National 
lines, to associate themselves by public declaration 
with a work which the nation has spontaneously 
taken in hand." 

The militarist Morning Post had called upon 
the Government to admit the fact that "the 
Army has killed the Home Rule Bill." The Gov- 
ernment did not do so explicitly; but it was per- 
fectly clear that the majority of the Cabinet and 
the Liberal Party were not sufficiently ardent in 
the cause of Irish Nationalism to provoke on its 
behalf the sentiment of civil war in their own 
country. The Army certainly appeared to have 
"killed the Home Rule Bill" so far as Unionist 
Ulster was concerned. To every party, the Irish 
Party included, the exclusion of Ulster, or a pan 
of the province, from the Home Rule Bill was 
now a practical certainty. 

The Parliamentary situation, however, was an- 
omalous. The Government still proposed to pro- 
ceed with the Home Rule Bill and with the 
Amending Bill which, from opposite points of 
view, Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson both 
alike rejected. While this somewhat unreal 
situation persisted at Westminster excitement 
was running very high in Ireland, and the grav- 
est fears were entertained that some unfortunate 

[203] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

incident on one side or the other might set a light 
to the explosive material in the country. 

Finally, when the Home Rule Bill had again 
been introduced and read a second time, the King 
intervened with a proposal that a conference be- 
tween leaders of both sides should be held, to 
see if some way out of the impasse could not be 
discovered. The King's proposal was, of course, 
accepted, and the conference assembled in Buck- 
ingham Palace. It consisted of Mr. Asquith and 
Mr. Lloyd George representing the Government ; 
Mr. Redmond and Mr. Dillon representing the 
Nationalists, Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Bonar 
Law representing the English, and Sir Ed- 
ward Carson and Colonel Craig representing the 
Ulster Unionists, with Mr. Lowther, the Speaker 
of the House of Commons, as Chairman. 

The clouds of war were beginning to gather in 
Europe after the murder of the Archduke Francis 
Ferdinand at Sarajevo when the Buckingham 
Palace Conference assembled. The King in per- 
son addressed the delegates. What happened at 
the conference was never officially disclosed; but 
it was assumed that the King in his address called 
attention to the European situation and urged the 
importance of an agreed settlement from the Eu- 
ropean as well as the Irish point of view. The 
prospect of a European war in which Great Brit- 

[204] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

ain would be involved, however, was at this time 
still remote; had it been otherwise, the issue of 
the conference would probably have been differ- 
ent. As it was there was no sufficient stimulus 
towards agreement, though undoubtedly serious 
effects were made to reach it. Though, as has 
been stated, nothing was officially made public 
with regard to the proceedings of the conference, 
it was currently reported that Mr. Redmond and 
his colleagues were now ready to make greater 
concessions than those embodied in the proposals 
recently rejected by Sir Edward Carson: the 
"time limit" provision, it was contemplated, 
should be omitted. It was understood that the 
conference finally broke down over the question 
of the counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh, which, 
although inhabited by a Nationalist majority, 
were regarded by the Ulster Protestants as an 
inalienable heritage. 

This question of the exclusion of a part of Ul- 
ster from the operation of Home Rule — "parti- 
tion" as it came to be called in Ireland — was to 
recur after the rising of 1916, and it will be con- 
venient to consider here Mr. Redmond's attitude 
towards it. No agreement was reached on the 
question at the Buckingham Palace Conference; 
but in 19 1 6 an agreement, whereby six Ulster 
counties were to be provisionally excluded from 

[205] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

the operation of the Home Rule Act, was reached, 
though never ratified, between Mr. Redmond and 
Sir Edward Carson. Mr. Redmond, before he 
accepted this proposal, had said that it was "un- 
workable." That apparent contradiction prob- 
ably supplies us with the clue to his attitude. The 
view which he seems to have taken was this : The 
Ulstermen's demand for exclusion was never put 
forward on its merits. It was rather a tactical 
move, made with the object of putting a spoke in 
the wheel of Home Rule, in the expectation that 
the "partition" of Ireland — "a statutory denial 
of the National claim," as a Tory spokesman tri- 
umphantly described it — would never be accepted 
by the Nationalists. This Ulster position, how- 
ever — if I may pursue the military metaphor — 
was capable of being outflanked. The correct 
tactical reply to the Ulstermen's demand for ex- 
clusion was to treat it not as a tactical move to 
defeat Home Rule, but as a demand put forward 
on its own merits; to accept it as such; and to 
confront the Ulstermen with a real prospect of 
"partition." Those industries largely interna- 
tional in character which exerted a great influ- 
ence in Ulster Unionist politics might be un- 
moved by such a prospect, but the commercial in- 
terests in Ulster which depended upon the rest of 
Ireland would be in a different case. 

[206] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

Sir Horace Plunkett in 19 17, when urging the 
Ulster Unionists to take part in the Irish Con- 
vention, declared that "unless I am greatly mis- 
taken, partition in the last analysis may prove to 
be administratively and financially as distasteful 
to the North-East as for other reasons it is to the 
rest of Ireland." It was not to be expected that 
the Ulstermen would retire at once from the po- 
sition which they had adopted with such public 
and dogmatic emphasis; but a short exposure to 
the practical disadvantages of partition would 
probably decide them to throw in their lot with 
Home Rule Ireland. It was a case upon which 
the old Irish saying that the longest way round is 
sometimes the shortest way home had a very rele- 
vant bearing. All this, perhaps, was implicit in 
Mr. Redmond's acceptance of an expedient which 
he characterised as "unworkable." Some such 
calculation, at least, we may assume, lay behind 
the attitude towards "partition" of a leader whose 
shrewd knowledge of permanent political forces 
equalled his ready grasp of the immediate prac- 
tical possibilities of any given political situation. 
Mr. Redmond possessed a political quality the 
worth of which is commonly misunderstood and 
under-rated in Irish politics — the quality of pa- 
tience. 

No agreement in the "partition" question, how- 
[207] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ever, was reached at the Buckingham Palace Con- 
ference. The conference broke up on July 24th. 
Sir Edward Carson, in his speech in the House 
of Commons on Mr. Redmond's death, revealed 
an incident of this time highly characteristic of 
the man. "As one who has been prominently 
identified with this great controversy," said Sir 
Edward Carson, "I say with absolute sincerity 
that during the whole of this period I cannot call 
to mind one bitter word having passed between 
us. Just before the"war, when the Irish situation 
was most threatening, I remember John Red- 
mond coming to me, after the breaking up of the 
Buckingham Palace Conference, and saying, Tor 
the sake of the old time on circuit, let us have a 
good shake hands/ " 

The failure of the Buckingham Palace Confer- 
ence was celebrated in Ulster on the following 
day by a parade through Belfast, organised by 
the Provisional Government, of five thousand 
men in khaki with bands, rifles, and machine- 
guns. In Parliament the Prime Minister an- 
nounced that, the Conference having failed, the 
Government could only proceed with the Amend- 
ing Bill, the second reading of which was accord- 
ingly set down for July 27th. Before that date 
was reached, however, a grave event had oc- 
curred in Ireland. 

[208] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

The National Volunteers had been preparing 
a coup by which they should show that in re- 
source and daring they equalled the Ulster gun- 
runners. Early in the forenoon of July 26th — a 
Sunday — a large yacht sailed into Howth Har- 
bour, near Dublin. Simultaneously with their ar- 
rival a force of about eight hundred Volunteers 
took possession of the pier and began to unload 
the rifles which formed her cargo. With these 
they marched off to Dublin. News of the opera- 
tion was telephoned to Dublin, and a force of 
Metropolitan Police, with two hundred soldiers, 
was sent to intercept the Volunteers. The police 
and military force and the Volunteers met half- 
way between Howth and Dublin. The Volun- 
teers refused to surrender the arms, and a scuffle 
followed, in which a non-commissioned officer of 
the King's Own Scottish Borderers, the regiment 
concerned, was wounded, and some Volunteers 
had their heads injured by blows of clubbed 
rifles. The majority of the Volunteers, seeing the 
direct road barred, took to the fields and made 
their way by circuitous routes to Dublin, where 
the news of the affair created intense excite- 
ment. 

The detachment of Scottish Borderers, march- 
ing back into Dublin after the affray, was fol- 
lowed by a crowd, which made hostile demonstra- 
te] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

tions. At a part of the quays known as Bach- 
elor's Walk some soldiers turned and fired on the 
crowd, killing three men and injuring many- 
others. This unhappy incident aroused the most 
bitter and violent feeling in Ireland. On the fol- 
lowing day — July 27th — Mr. Redmond at once 
moved the adjournment of the House of Com- 
mons in order to draw attention to the affair, and 
did so in a speech of great gravity, remarking 
that members would acknowledge that it was a 
difficult task for him to deal with the matter with- 
out some vehemence and heat, but he would en- 
deavour to deal with it in a perfectly judicial 
spirit. In this matter, he said blood had been 
shed and life had been lost, and it seemed to him 
that, unless most definite and drastic steps were 
taken to prevent a recurrence of events of this 
kind, disastrous consequences must certainly en- 
sue. He proceeded to review at length the de- 
velopment of the Irish situation since the founda- 
tion of the Ulster Volunteers and the subsequent 
issue, after that force was armed, of the Procla- 
mation forbidding importation of arms into Ire- 
land. 

At the outset he declared that when the Larne 
episode occurred he and his colleagues realised 
the terrible risks and the terrible danger which 
proceedings of the kind entailed. He then 

[210] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

recalled the fact that, when the Government an- 
nounced its decision not to take any immediate 
proceedings against the Larne gun-runners, he 
and his colleagues entirely approved of its atti- 
tude. Before the Government took its decision 
"they (the Irish party) made their view known, 
and they thought, after all that had happened, it 
would have been a futile, exasperating and use- 
less proceeding to enter upon a series of prosecu- 
tions in connection with that transaction." "If 
people held," said Mr. Redmond, "that the Gov- 
ernment was wrong in not prosecuting the Larne 
gun-runners, he shared the responsibility." But, 
he added, he and his colleagues had urged over 
and over again upon the Government the advis- 
ability of the withdrawal, or at any rate the sus- 
pension of the Proclamation. He then read a let- 
ter to the Chief Secretary in which, on June 30th, 
he had put his views upon the matter on record. 
In this letter he urged the withdrawal of the 
Proclamation on various grounds, especially its 
unequal working between North and South. 
"This effect of this unequal working of the Proc- 
lamation," wrote Mr. Redmond, "has been grave 
among our people, and has tended to increase 
both their exasperation and their apprehension. 
The apprehensions of our people are justified to 
the utmost. They find themselves, especially in 

[211] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

the North, faced by a large drilled, organised 
and armed body. Furthermore, the incident of 
the Curragh has given them a fixed idea that they 
cannot rely on the Army for protection. The 
possession of arms by Nationalists would, in these 
circumstances, be no provocation for disorder, 
but be a means of preserving the peace by con- 
fronting one armed force with another, not help- 
less, but, by being armed, fully able to protect 
themselves." 

Having read the remainder of this letter, Mr. 
Redmond proceeded to say that its concluding 
paragraph exactly described what had happened 
on the previous day in Dublin. No such attempt 
to disarm a body of Volunteers, he added, had 
been made in all the long months that had passed 
in Ulster, and he asked who was responsible for 
"this monstrous attempt to discriminate in the ad- 
ministration of the law between the various class- 
es of His Majesty's subjects in Ireland." The 
real responsibility rested on those who requisi- 
tioned the troops. (This was done by Mr. Har- 
rel, the Assistant Commissioner of Police, whom 
the Government suspended pending an inquiry; 
Sir John Ross, the Chief Commissioner, who was 
technically responsible, sent in his resignation.) 

Summing up, Mr. Redmond asked, first of all, 
that Sir John Ross should be suspended and put 

[212] 



REDMOND AND ULSTER 

on his trial ; secondly, that there should be a full 
judicial and military inquiry into the affair; 
thirdly, that the offending regiment should be re- 
moved from Ireland. He asked, finally, for the 
revocation of the Proclamation, which, as it 
stood, would be a constant source of risk and of 
danger. He asked that the law should be admin- 
istered impartially; that that which was not re- 
garded as a crime in Ulster should not be regarded 
as a crime in other counties in Ireland, that so 
long as the Ulster Volunteers were allowed to 
drill and arm, and march with fixed bayonets and 
machine guns, Nationalists should be allowed to 
do the same. In conclusion, said Mr. Redmond, 
with emphasis, "I would let the House clearly 
understand that four-fifths of the Irish people 
will not submit any longer to be bullied or pun- 
ished or penalised or shot for conduct that was 
permitted to go scot free in the open light of day 
in every county in Ulster by other sections of 
their fellow-countrymen." 

In what manner this critical situation might 
have developed in normal circumstances, it would 
be idle to speculate. The development of the 
European crisis rapidly submerged the Irish 
crisis to which the newspapers had been devoting 
all their attention for the past eighteen months. 
The Amending Bill, consideration of which had 

[213] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

been postponed by the Bachelor's Walk affair 
in Dublin, was set down again for debate on July 
30th. When that date was reached the Govern- 
ment and the opposition, in view of the menacing 
situation in Europe, decided upon a further post- 
ponement of the Bill, which, as a matter of fact, 
never came before the House of Commons again. 
In Ireland, for the moment, it was as if a 
sponge had been passed over the tangled and tu- 
multuous history of the past few years. One inci- 
dent sufficiently illustrated the changed atmos- 
phere in Ireland which the outbreak of war 
at once produced. The victims of the shooting 
affair in Dublin had been given a great popular 
funeral. The regiment concerned, the King's 
Own Scottish Borderers, had been confined to 
Barracks, and Mr. Redmond had demanded its 
removal from Ireland. The same regiment, on 
the day of its embarkation on the mobilisation of 
the British Expeditionary Force, was heartily 
cheered through the streets of Dublin. 



[214] 



CHAPTER IX 

THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

ONE thing I would say," said Sir Edward 
Grey, the Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs, in his speech in the House of Commons 
on August 3rd, the eve of the British declaration 
of war against Germany ; "the one bright spot in 
the very dreadful situation is Ireland. The posi- 
tion in Ireland — and this I should like to be clearly 
understood abroad — is not a consideration among 
the things we have to take into account now." 

It was this statement which drew from Mr. 
Redmond the historic speech in which he ranged 
Ireland beside Great Britain in the event of war. 
His speech was short, and it deserves to be quoted 
in full. "I hope," he said, ''the House will not 
think me impertinent to intervene in the debate, 
but I am moved to do so a great deal by that sen- 
tence in the speech of the Foreign Secretary in 
which he said that the one bright spot in the situa- 
tion was the changed feeling in Ireland. Sir, in 
past time, when this Empire has been engaged in 

[215] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

these terrible enterprises, it is true that it would 
be the utmost affectation and folly on my part to 
deny that the sympathies of Nationalist Ireland, 
for reasons deep down in the centuries of history, 
have been estranged from this country. But al- 
low me to say that what has occurred in recent 
years has altered the situation completely. I must 
not touch upon any controversial topic, but this 
I may be allowed to say, that a wider knowledge 
of the real facts of Irish historv has altered the 
view of the democracy of this country towards 
the Irish question, and I honestly believe that the 
democracy of Ireland will turn with the utmost 
anxiety and sympathy to this country in every 
trial and danger with which she is faced. 

"There is a possibility of history repeating it- 
self. The House will remember that in 1778, at 
the end of the disastrous American War, when 
it might be said that the military force of this 
country was almost at its lowest ebb, the shores 
of Ireland were threatened with invasion. Then 
100,000 Irish Volunteers sprang into existence 
for the purpose of defending those shores. At 
first, however — and how sad is the reading of 
the history of those days — no Catholic was al- 
lowed to be enrolled in that body of Volunteers, 
yet from the first day the Catholics of the South 
and West subscribed their money and sent it for 

[216] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

the army of their Protestant fellow-countrymen. 
Ideas widened as time went on, and finally the 
Catholics of the South were armed and enrolled 
as brothers in arms with their fellow-countrymen. 
May history repeat itself. To-day there are in 
Ireland two large bodies of Volunteers, one of 
which has sprung into existence in the North and 
another in the South. I say to the Government 
that they may to-morrow withdraw every one of 
their troops from Ireland. Ireland will be de- 
fended by her armed sons from invasion, and for 
that purpose the armed Catholics in the South 
will be only too glad to join arms with the armed 
Protestant Ulstermen. Is it too much to hope 
that out of this situation a result may spring 
which will be good, not merely for the Empire, 
but for the future welfare and integrity of the 
Irish nation? Whilst Irishmen are in favour of 
peace, and would desire to save the democracy of 
this country from all the horrors of war, whilst 
we will make any possible sacrifice for that pur- 
pose, still if the necessity is forced upon this coun- 
try we offer this to the Government of the day. 
They may take their troops away, and if it is al- 
lowed to us, in comradeship with our brothers in 
the North, we will ourselves defend the shores of 
Ireland." 

A writer in the London Times, believed to be 
[217] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

Mr. Birrell, afterwards suggested that in thus 
offering Ireland's assistance in the war Mr. Red- 
mond "took the curve too sharply." There is, 
however, no reason to believe that he was mis- 
taken in his interpretation of the mind of the over- 
whelming majority of Nationalists. Pro-Ger- 
manism in Ireland at the outbreak of war was 
an altogether negligible sentiment. It existed, of 
course: the revolutionary Irish Freedom, edited 
by Sean MacDermott, afterwards one of the sig- 
natories of the Irish Republican Proclamation in 
April, 19 1 6, was frankly pro-German, and Roger 
Casement, in a series of articles published in 
America just before and immediately after the 
declaration of war developed the pro-German for- 
eign policy for Ireland which he had just ex- 
pounded in "Ireland, Germany, and the Next 
War" in the summer of 19 13. Sinn Fein, through 
its official organ, issued a declaration of neutral- 
ity. "Ireland," wrote Mr. Griffith, "is not at war 
with Germany. She has no quarrel with any Con- 
tinental Power. England is at war with Germany 
. . . Germany is nothing to us in herself, but she 
is not an enemy." 

But events showed how right Mr. Redmond 
was in his estimate of the Irish attitude towards 
the war, and how little weight Sinn Fein car- 
ried, still less the revolutionary pro-Germanism 

[218] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

of MacDermott and Casement. Immediately 
after Mr. Redmond's declaration the Standing 
Committee of the National Volunteers unani- 
mously expressed their complete readiness to take 
joint action with the Ulster Volunteers for the 
defence of Ireland. The National Volunteers in 
the three Southern Provinces rose to the height 
of their popularity, and numerous peers and lead- 
ing Unionists became officers in the force and 
induced their followers to join it. The Ulster 
Unionists, however, stubbornly refused to share 
in the emotion of a united Ireland. 

Perhaps Mr. Redmond had hoped against hope 
that the great gesture with which he pledged Na- 
tionalist Ireland's support in the war would recon- 
cile the Protestants of Ulster to the idea of Home 
Rule. When that hope failed he had perforce to 
descend to the plane of political realities. At the 
moment the outstanding fact in the political situa- 
tion from the Irish point of view was that, while 
the Home Rule Bill was ripe for passage into law 
under the Parliament Act, it had not yet been 
safely placed upon the Statute Book. Mr. Red- 
mond adopted the position that when the circum- 
stances of the war arose it was the Government's 
declared intention to put the Home Rule Bill on 
the Statute Book whether the proposals embodied 
in the Amending Bill were accepted or not. 

[219] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

"We desire," he said in the House of Commons 
on the last day of August, "that this thing shall 
be settled with as little controversy as possible. 
At the same time we must emphatically say that 
any proposals which will have the effect of de- 
priving us of the enactment of the Irish measure 
would be instantly and warmly resented by us. 
Let me say one word more. There has arisen in 
Ireland the greatest spirit that has ever arisen in 
the history of the connection between the two 
countries for the reconciliation between the peo- 
ple of Ireland and the people of this country. 
There is to-day, I venture to say, a feeling of 
friendliness to this country, and a desire to join 
hands in the interest of this country, which never 
used to be found in the past, and I say with all 
respect that it would not only be folly, but it 
would be a crime, if that spirit were in any de- 
gree marred by any action which this country 
might take. I ask the House, and I ask all sec- 
tions of the House, to take a course which will 
enable me to go back to Ireland and translate 
into vigorous action the spirit of the words I have 
used to-day." The reference in the last sentence, 
of course, was to recruiting; for it was now clear 
from Lord Kitchener's proposals that men were 
required not for home defence, but for active ser- 
vice abroad. 

[220] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

The proposal to place the Home Rule Bill on 
the Statute Book was bitterly opposed by the 
Unionist Party. Finally, however, on September 
15th, Mr. Asquith announced the Government's 
decision to pass it into law and simultaneously to 
put upon the Statute Book a Suspensory Act pro- 
viding that no effective steps should be taken to 
bring it into practical operation for at least twelve 
months, the suspensory power to be further in- 
voked by Order in Council if the war should still 
continue. This decision Sir Edward Carson de- 
scribed as "an act of unparalleled treachery and 
betrayal," and Mr. Bonar Law led the Opposition 
out of the House of Commons as a protest against 
it. Mr. Redmond, on the other hand, instantly 
interpreted it as a call upon him to redeem the 
pledge which he had given a fortnight earlier. 

He defined his attitude towards the war in these 
words: "In this war, for the first time for over 
a hundred years, Ireland felt that her interests 
were the same as those of England. She felt that 
the British democracy had kept faith with her, 
and she knew that it was a just war. She was 
moved in a very special way by the fact that it 
was a war undertaken in the defence of a small 
nation and an oppressed people. There was not 
a heart in Ireland which was not stirred by ad- 
miration for gallant Belgium, and with a desire 

[221] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

to come to her assistance. Alsace also appealed 
to the sympathy of the Irish people in its desire 
to go back to its ancient nationality. The Poles 
also had upon their side the sympathy of the Irish 
people for many generations. He would say noth- 
ing of France, the old friend of Ireland and cham- 
pion of democratic freedom. The manhood of 
Ireland would spring to their aid in this war. On 
hundreds of platforms during the last few years 
he had declared that when the rights of Ireland 
were admitted by the democracy of England Ire- 
land would become the strongest arm in the de- 
fence of the Empire. The test had come sooner 
than they expected, but he told the Prime Minis- 
ter that it would be honourably met. It was 
the duty of his countrymen and should be their 
honour to take their place in the righting line." 
Immediately after this speech in which he 
saluted the enactment of Home Rule Mr. Red- 
mond crossed to Ireland to take up the task of 
recruiting. The atmosphere in Ireland was in 
the main propitious. The Irish people are tradi- 
tionally a military people, and the times in Ire- 
land, upon the outbreak of war, were war-like, 
so that martial enthusiasm was readily diverted 
into the unaccustomed channel of service in the 
British Army. That loaded atmosphere of gun- 
powder, in which Irishmen had lived for a year 

[222] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

and more before the war, found its natural dis- 
charge in one direction in the call of arms in 
Europe; as later it was to find another and un- 
happy discharge in the rising of Easter Week, 
1916. Further, the appeal of the French tradi- 
tion — the hospitality which the "wild geese" 
found in France, of Sarsfield and St. Ruth, of 
the Irish Brigade which fought under the French 
flag in many a Continental field, of '98 and Hum- 
bert — was potent, despite the sometimes anti- 
clerical policy of the Third Republic, to align 
the sentiment of Ireland on the side of the Al- 
lies. Again, the German invasion of Belgium, 
that monstrous outrage upon a small nationality, 
was bound to evoke a response from the country 
whose whole history was that of the assertion of 
the rights of small nationalities. 

But Ireland was in an even greater degree than 
England isolated from European politics, and 
the traditional feeling against England as her 
only enemy was deep-seated and strong. Her 
people could scarcely be expected to intervene in 
the Allied cause in any mood of pure altruism un- 
less it had seemed to them that in striking a blow 
for the rights of small nationalities in Belgium 
they were also striking a blow for the rights of 
small nationalities in Ireland. Mr. Redmond was 
right in insisting that the placing of Home Rule 

[223] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

on the Statute Book must be the finally decisive 
factor in securing Ireland's support of the war, 
and that without it there must be to Nationalists 
some aspect of cynicism in the spectacle of Eng- 
land inviting the assistance of Ireland in a war 
on behalf of the rights of small nationalities. It 
cannot be denied that there was much disappoint- 
ment in Ireland over the fact that the operation 
of the Home Rule Act was indefinitely postponed ; 
but in general Mr. Redmond's acceptance of the 
suspensory arrangement was regarded as the best 
course possible in the circumstances. The enact- 
ment of Home Rule was at least for Nationalist 
Ireland a formal recognition by England of Irish 
nationality, and that recognition was of capital 
value in securing Ireland's support of the war. 

On his arrival in Ireland Mr. Redmond lost no 
time in expressing in plain terms his conception 
of Ireland's duty in the war. He arrived from 
England on September 20th, and on his way to 
his home at Aughhavanagh met and inspected 
some companies of the East Wicklow Brigade 
of the National Volunteers. He made a short 
speech to them. "The interests of Ireland, of the 
whole of Ireland," he said, "are at stake in this 
war. This war is undertaken in defence of the 
highest principles of religion and morality and 
right, and it would be a disgrace for ever to 

[224] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

our country, a reproach to her manhood, and a 
denial of the lessons of her history if young Ire- 
land confined their efforts to remaining at home 
to defend the shores of Ireland from an unlikely 
invasion, and shrinking from the duty of prov- 
ing in the field of battle that gallantry and cour- 
age which have distinguished their race all 
through its history. I say to you, therefore, your 
duty is two- fold. I am glad to see such magnifi- 
cent material for soldiers around me, and I say 
to you: go on drilling and make yourselves effi- 
cient for the work and then assert yourselves as 
men, not only in Ireland itself, but wherever the 
firing line extends, in defence of right, of free- 
dom and religion, in this war." 

In this impromptu fashion — for his meeting 
with the Volunteers was accidental — Mr. Red- 
mond began the vigorous recruiting campaign 
which, together with the members of his party 
(with some few exceptions, notably Mr. Dillon) 
he conducted during the last months of 1914 and 
the early months of 19 15. The young men of 
Ireland, the majority of whom were by this time 
enrolled in the National Volunteers, responded to 
his appeal in large numbers. The greatest enthu- 
siasm attended the progress of the recruiting 
campaign, and throughout the country recruits 

[225] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

leaving home for the training depots were played 
off at the stations by the Volunteer bands. 

Perhaps the crowning moment of Mr. Red- 
mond's political life was reached on September 
25th, when in the Dublin Mansion House he stood 
on the platform beside the Prime Minister of Eng- 
land, the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secre- 
tary for Ireland, and a number of leading Irish- 
men, Unionist and Nationalist. He stood there 
as the leader of an Ireland all but united within 
herself, and for the first time in centuries one in 
sympathy and spirit with Great Britain — the em- 
bodiment of a political miracle. "I hope," he said 
in his speech following Mr. Asquith, "that no peo- 
ple in Great Britain will imagine that because 
there are a little handful of pro-Germans in Ire- 
land, there is any doubt as to the sentiment of 
the Nationalists of this country." "I say to the 
Prime Minister, and through him to the people 
of Great Britain," Mr. Redmond declared in con- 
clusion, "you have kept faith with Ireland: Ire- 
land will keep faith with you." 

In his speech before Mr. Redmond the Prime 
Minister had half-promised the formation of a 
special Irish Army Corps, and had added that he 
trusted the Volunteers would become a per- 
manent, integral, and characteristic part of the 
forces of the Crown. Mr. Redmond took up the 

[226] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

point. "I was delighted to hear the words of the 
Prime Minister with reference to the proposed 
treatment of Irish recruits. It is not enough to 
tell us that there are Irish regiments, recruited in 
Ireland, and inasmuch as they are Irish they 
form an Irish Army Corps: we want the thing 
done specifically, an Irish Army Corps created 
so that their deeds of valour in the field would be 
able to be garnered by us as one of the treasures 
of our nation in the future. I tell the Prime Min- 
ister he will get plenty of recruits, and of the 
best material. In my judgment the body of Vol- 
unteers will form an inexhaustible source of 
strength to the new Army Corps and to the new 
Army which is being created." 

Mr. Redmond's speech in Wicklow on his ar- 
rival in Ireland, however, had precipitated a split 
in the Volunteer movement. A few days after 
the delivery of that speech the Dublin newspapers 
published a "Manifesto of the Irish Volunteers," 
signed by Mr. John MacNeill and several mem- 
bers of the original Volunteer Committee. The 
signatories to the manifesto declared that "Ire- 
land could not with honour or safety take part in 
foreign quarrels other than through the action of 
an Irish Parliament," and repudiated "the claim 
of any man to offer up the blood and lives of the 
sons of Ireland while no National Government 

[227] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

which could speak and act for the people of Ire- 
land is allow to exist." 

Mr. Redmond promptly replied to this chal- 
lenge with an announcement that, owing to the 
publication of the manifesto by a minority — it 
was, of course, a majority of the original mem- 
bers — he had taken steps to request the Provi- 
sional Committee to meet and reorganise the gov- 
erning body of the Volunteers. The Volunteers 
thus split into two bodies. The great majority 
adhered to Mr. Redmond's leadership, and were 
afterwards known as "National" Volunteers. 
The minority which seceded under Mr. MacNeill 
were known as "Irish" Volunteers, and this fac- 
tion, passing under the control of the revolution- 
aries, was later to be chiefly responsible for the 
rising of 1916. 

It is important to observe here that this split 
in the Volunteer movement might have been 
averted, and that the ultimate responsibility for 
it belonged not to Mr. Redmond's attitude to- 
wards Irish recruiting, but to the attitude of 
the War Office towards Irish recruiting, the at- 
titude which Mr. Lloyd George afterwards de- 
scribed as one of "malignant stupidity." Three 
months before the war Colonel Moore, the In- 
spector-General of the Southern Volunteers, had 
proposed the extension to Ireland of the Terri- 

[228] 



* a 



5 ^ 




THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

torial Act, under which both the Ulster and the 
National Volunteers might enlist, and had dis- 
cussed the question on these lines with the Brit- 
ish Secretary for War, Colonel Seely. 

When Mr. Redmond made his famous speech 
in the House of Commons on the eve of the 
declaration of war the natural solution seemed 
to be the embodiment of the two groups of Volun- 
teers as Territorials and their drafting hence for 
foreign service. Immediately after that speech 
an officer on the Staff of the Commander-in-Chief 
in Ireland proposed a scheme by which all the 
Volunteers in Ireland, Unionist and Nationalist, 
should receive military training. He calculated 
that if the British troops were removed, as Mr. 
Redmond had suggested, there would be room 
for 20,000 men in barracks at one time, and these 
should, after two months' training, be passed 
on to the standing camps, their places in bar- 
racks being taken by a new levy of 20,000 Volun- 
teers. The most prominent men on the Volun- 
teer Committee — not Mr. Redmond's nominees 
only, but also Mr. MacNeill and some of his 
friends — agreed to these proposals, and Mr. Mac- 
Neill accompanied Colonel Moore to the Royal 
Hospital, the military headquarters in Dublin, 
to hear them discussed. "I want to lay stress 
on the fact," said Colonel Moore in his evidence 

[229] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

before the Rebellion Commission, "that the lead- 
ers of the Irish Volunteers, and among them par- 
ticipators in the late rebellion, were at that time 
willing to join in the defence of the Empire, but 
were refused by the Government." 

Lord Kitchener refused absolutely to take ac- 
tion with the Volunteers in the sense suggested; 
and that refusal, coupled with the delay in the 
passing of the Home Rule Bill, at the outset 
damped Irish enthusiasm for the war. Colonel 
Moore, himself a supporter of Mr. Redmond's 
policy, thus described the situation as he saw it 
at this time from the inside. "When at last the 
(Home Rule) Bill was signed, the enthusiasm 
was gone, and the fact that it was not to be put 
into force until after the war, with the threat of 
an undefined Amending Bill, left the uncertainty 
as great as ever. . . . Nothing but the enormous 
influence of Mr. Redmond and the leaders of the 
Irish Party prevented a universal determined agi- 
tation against recruiting." It speaks volumes for 
the authority of Mr. Redmond that he was able, 
with no more loss than was involved in the seces- 
sion of the minority of the Volunteers under Mr. 
MacNeill and his friends, to make his policy of 
support of the war so largely effective. 

The difficulties which Mr. Redmond had to 
face, however were only beginning. His pro- 

[230] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

posal to embody the Volunteers as Territorials 
was rejected in the case of the National Volun- 
teers, but in effect, though not in form, was ac- 
cepted in that of the Ulster Volunteers. It was 
months before Mr. Redmond could prevail on 
the War Office to assent to the formation of a 
distinctive Irish Division, and when it was at 
last in course of formation he encountered at 
every turn official obstacles to his attempt to base 
the appeal to national sentiment on a revival of 
the memories of the historic "Irish Brigade," 
while the Division was very largely officered by 
Unionists and Protestants. The "Curragh Mu- 
tiny" was by no means forgotten in Ireland ; and 
the suspicion that, for political reasons, influence 
was at work in the War Office to discourage too 
large a recruitment from Nationalist Ireland was 
increased by the very different treatment of the 
Ulster Volunteers. 

In this case the War Office responded with 
alacrity to Sir Edward Carson's proposal for 
the formation of a distinctive Ulster Division of 
the New Army. The Ulster Division was com- 
posed almost wholly of Carsonite Volunteers and 
their sympathisers, and it was in fact a homoge- 
neous political body. Several of the men who had 
been engaged in the "grave and unprecedented 
outrage" at Larne now occupied comfortable war 

[231] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

situations. The Commander of the Ulster Volun- 
teers avowed that his men, now "thoroughly- 
trained and with vast experience of war," would 
have no difficulty after the war in relegating 
Home Rule to the Devil. Sir Edward Carson 
and Mr. Bonar Law, the Leader of the Unionist 
Opposition, in Belfast in the late autumn of 19 14, 
announced their intention after the war to re- 
peal the Home Rule Act so far as Ulster was 
concerned. Mr. Bonar Law refused to stand on 
the same platform with Mr. Redmond on the 
occasion of Mr. Asquith's visit to Dublin; and 
Sir Edward Carson later ostentatiously declined 
an invitation to join with Mr. Redmond in ad- 
dressing a recruiting meeting at Newry. 

In May, 191 5, both Sir Edward Carson and 
Mr. Bonar Law were included in the first Coali- 
tion Government formed by Mr. Asquith. Mr. 
Redmond was offered a seat in the new Cabinet 
together with Sir Edward Carson. He refused 
it, as he was bound to refuse it, in accordance 
with the old Parnellite tradition which forbade 
any member of the Irish Party to accept posi- 
tions in or under the Government. He would 
have appreciated the honour more had he not 
been aware that the Government knew that he 
must refuse it, and that the mere offer of inclu- 
sion to himself could not in the circumstances 

[232] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

offset the inevitable consequences in Ireland of 
the inclusion of Sir Edward Carson. Mr. Red- 
mond, together with Mr. Dillon, in refusing the 
offer wrote letters to Mr. Asquith warning him 
in the strongest possible terms of the effect of 
bringing Sir Edward Carson into the Cabinet. 
The net result was that Sir Edward Carson was 
brought into the Cabinet and Mr. Redmond was 
not ; and from that event dated the change in the 
spirit of Ireland. 

"How can any one in this House," asked Mr. 
Dillon in the House of Commons subsequently, 
"blame the Irish people if they distrusted the 
Government? Home Rule was going to be 
treated as 'a scrap of paper' and repealed when 
the war was over; and from that hour our men 
left us by tens of thousands. In spite of all we 
(Mr. Redmond and his colleagues) could do we 
were met by the statement that England always 
broke her word to us, and 'how can you tell us 
for a single moment that she is going to keep 
this treaty with Ireland when she brings into her 
Cabinet a man who has given public notice that 
he will rebel again the moment the war is over 
and hold his rifles for the purpose of tearing the 
Home Rule Act to pieces and treating it as "a 
scrap of paper"?' " 

From May, 191 5, indeed, Mr. Redmond be- 
[233] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

gan to fight a losing battle in Ireland. He la- 
boured manfully throughout the following year 
to keep Ireland behind him in his war policy; but 
the circumstances in which, to use the words that. 
he employed afterwards himself, he had been 
"let down and betrayed" by the Government were 
too much for him. In the second half of 191 5 
the number of recruits fell away in an astonish- 
ing degree, and simultaneously the Irish Volun- 
teers gained a great accession of strength. The 
National Volunteers, under Mr. Redmond's con- 
trol, at the same time were allowed — largely by 
force of circumstances, but not without his own 
tacit approval — to fall into decay. The question 
of the application of conscription in the autumn 
of 19 1 5 gave a great stimulus to the Volunteer 
movement. The representations of Mr. Red- 
mond and Mr. Dillon succeeded in securing the 
exclusion of Ireland first from the Registration 
Act and then from the Military Service Act, and 
this success for a time steadied his hold on the 
country. 

The attitude of Mr. Redmond and Mr. Dillon 
towards the vigorous propaganda conducted by 
Sinn Fein during the latter part of 191 5 and the 
early part of 1916 was the same; but their mo- 
tives were entirely different. Both opposed the 
repressive measures fitfully and ineffectively un- 

[234] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

dertaken by the Irish Executive. Mr. Dillon, 
however, opposed them because he felt that the 
revolutionary movement was so strong that re- 
pression could only precipitate an outbreak. Mr. 
Redmond, on the other hand, opposed them be- 
cause he felt that the revolutionary movement 
was weak enough to be ignored with safety. Of 
the two Mr. Redmond was certainly the more 
right. As the strong reaction of public opinion 
which immediately followed the rising of Easter, 
19 16, was to show, the revolutionary party in 
Ireland was in itself of insignificant proportions 
and had little following among the Irish people. 
At the same time there is no question that Mr. 
Redmond did underestimate the chances of an 
outbreak. 

It was the aftermath of the rising which large- 
ly swept away in a storm of passion Mr. Red- 
mond's authority in the country; but before the 
rising it was rather opposition other than revo- 
lutionary — though strengthened indirectly by the 
revolutionary propaganda in the background — 
which seemed to menace his position. As the 
autumn of 191 5 went on many Irishmen, strong- 
ly inclined towards the Allied cause and hitherto 
numbered among Mr. Redmond's supporters, be- 
gan to think that an end should be made of the 
equivocal situation in which the Nationalist lead- 

[235] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ers professed unimpaired support of the war 
while an obviously discontented Ireland was 
more and more falling away from support of the 
war. The remedy suggested was the immediate 
operation of Home Rule, coupled with a frank as- 
sertion of Ireland's claim, as a poor and depopu- 
lated country, to special treatment in the mat- 
ter of taxation and recruitment. 

By the wording of the Suspensory Act of Sep- 
tember, 19 14, the operation of the Home Rule 
Act was postponed for a year. When Septem- 
ber, 191 5, arrived the Government sought and 
obtained an Order in Council for a further post- 
ponement until March, 191 6. A strong move- 
ment grew up in favour of immediate Home 
Rule. Simultaneously a movement of protest 
grew up against the heavy burden which war tax- 
ation imposed on Ireland, especially by the Bud- 
get introduced in the early months of 1916. The 
financial changes of the Home Rule Act were 
based on the allegation of Irish insolvency; but 
with the increase of taxation since the outbreak 
of war Ireland was now paying for Irish expen- 
diture to the full, and in addition £5,000,000 an- 
nually as an Imperial contribution ; moreover, the 
proportion of taxable income now taken from 
Ireland was more than twice that taken from 
Great Britain, nor did the money go, as it largely 

[236] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

went in Great Britain, to the stimulation of war 
industries. 

In these circumstances Mr. Redmond was 
strongly urged not only by his avowed critics, but 
also by some of his own supporters, to do two 
things. First, he should press for the operation 
of the Home Rule Act in March, 1916, when the 
second period of postponement arrived; next, he 
should secure for Ireland special treatment in 
the matter of taxation as he had secured it in 
the case of recruitment, attack the new Budget, 
and, if necessary, withdraw the support of his 
party from the Government. The pressure in both 
these directions was strong upon Mr. Redmond. 
Certainly his position in Ireland was becoming 
less secure. He was perfectly well aware that 
he could do much to restore it by pressing for the 
immediate operation of the Home Rule Act, or 
even to some extent by attacking the Budget. 
But he refused to do either. 

He had to make a hard choice between an 
alienation of English sympathy and a certain loss 
of Irish confidence. Faithful to the first tenet of 
his political creed that the realisation of Ireland's 
aspirations depended on maintaining the sym- 
pathy and support of the British democracy, and, 
moreover, himself ardently for the war and sin- 
cerely desirous not to embarrass the Government 

[237] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

in its conduct, he chose the former course. So 
in March, 191 6, the operation of the Home Rule 
Act was again postponed — this time until the end 
of the war — without protest from him. 

It is idle to speculate how this equivocal situa- 
tion would have ended; for in the following 
month it was swept away by the rising and the 
whole character of the Irish question was radi- 
cally transformed. This is not the place in which 
to deal at length with that tragic episode in re- 
cent Irish history: profoundly as it bears upon 
the life of Mr. Redmond, the Rebellion of Easter 
Week itself may be reviewed very briefly. It 
was commonly described afterwards as the Sinn 
Fein Rebellion ; but such a description has at best 
a sort of ex post facto justification. Though as a 
result of it — or rather of the circumstances of its 
suppression — Sinn Fein acquired an enormously 
enhanced popularity, and after the event every 
malcontent in Ireland rallied round the Sinn Fein 
banner, Sinn Fein itself had no direct responsi- 
bility for the rising. By a curious, but easily 
explicable paradox, while the rising of 19 16 was 
the making of Sinn Fein, Sinn Fein did not make 
the rising, except in so far as its somewhat doc- 
trinaire philosophy of secession contributed to 
creating the explosive atmosphere in which the 

[238] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

outbreak came — and this contribution was rela- 
tively not very large. 

The rising was the direct product of three fac- 
tors. First, and incomparably most important, 
was the social discontent bred in the ghastly 
slums of Dublin, fanned to desperation by the 
breaking of the great strike of 19 13, and organ- 
ised in the ''Citizen Army" commanded by James 
Connolly, Larkin's successor and the real motive 
force in the rising. At bottom the outbreak was 
an attempt rather at social than at political revo- 
lution. The second factor was a part of that 
small body of the National Volunteers, formed in 
response to the Ulster Volunteer movement, 
which as the "Irish" Volunteers had seceded 
under Mr. MacNeill's leadership from allegiance 
to Mr. Redmond. The third factor, behind and 
acting upon these two first factors, was that ir- 
reconcilable remnant of the physical force move- 
ment surviving in the revolutionary secret society 
known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, in 
touch with kindred spirits of extremism in the 
Clan-na-Gael in the United States, and through 
them supplied by Roger Casement with a nexus 
with Germany. 

Perhaps the further suspension of the Home 
Rule Act contributed towards precipitating the 
insurrection ; certainly the knowledge that the au- 

[239] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

thorities were contemplating the forcible suppres- 
sion of the organisation did much to precipitate 
it. In the end the rising was a hasty and ill-con- 
ceived adventure. It was the lack of premedita- 
tion in the launching of the enterprise which se- 
cured its first facile success, and the same cause 
produced its early and complete collapse. Out- 
side of Dublin a few sporadic, uncoordinated 
and ineffective outbreaks were easily suppressed. 
In Dublin the insurgents were able to seize the 
centre of the city, thanks largely to the fact that 
the rising took the authorities completely by sur- 
prise: the majority of the officers of the garri- 
son, in fact, were absent at a race-meeting in the 
vicinity. The insurgents maintained their hold 
upon the centre of the city precariously and with 
increasing loss until the end of the week, when 
they — numbering perhaps two thousand men at 
most — surrendered unconditionally, and were dis- 
armed and imprisoned. 

Strategically the rising was serious, or rather 
might have been if the insurgent plans had not 
been hopelessly disarranged by the miscarriage 
of the Casement expedition. Politically it was, in 
itself, trivial. It failed so early and so completely 
for the precise reason, very largely, that the great 
mass of the Irish people did not approve it or 
support it. While there were many who admired 

[240] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

the courage of the enterprise, its collapse left 
those who had taken part in it with — immediately 
— no open supporters in the vocal body of the 
Irish people. 

Mr. Redmond was not in Ireland at the time of 
the rising, which occurred while Parliament was 
in session. Mr. Dillon, his chief colleague in the 
Irish Party, happened to be at his house in Dub- 
lin, situated in a locality close to the centre of 
the insurgent operations. Mr. Dillon therefore 
had better opportunity than Mr. Redmond for 
appreciating the situation on the spot, and it was 
probably for this reason that Mr. Redmond left 
to him the main part of the Nationalist share in 
the Parliamentary debates on the insurrection. 

Mr. Redmond's chief preoccupation at the mo- 
ment was not so much its effect in Ireland as its 
effect on English public opinion. He expressed 
afterwards his fear that the rising would provoke 
in England an immediate demand for the repeal 
of the Home Rule Act. He lost no time in de- 
fining his own position towards it in a state- 
ment issued to the Press. "My first feeling," he 
said, "on hearing of this insane movement was 
one of horror, discouragement, almost despair. I 
asked myself whether Ireland, as so often before 
in her tragic history, was to dash the cup of 
liberty from her lips. Was the insanity of a 

[241 1 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

small section of her people once again to turn all 
her marvellous victories of the last few years into 
irreparable defeat and to send her back on the 
very eve of her final recognition as a free nation 
into another long night of slavery, incalculable 
suffering, weary and uncertain struggle?" 

He went on to say that when the war came Ire- 
land made a choice which was inevitable if she 
was to be true to all the principles which she had 
held through all her history, and which she had 
just so completely vindicated on her own soil — 
namely, the rights of small nations, the sacred 
principle of nationality, liberty, and democracy. 
This was the opinion of the overwhelming ma- 
jority of the Irish people, the opinion which thou- 
sands of Irish soldiers had sealed with their blood 
by dying in the cause of the liberty of Ireland 
and of the world. The doctrine that the policy of 
Ireland must be decided by Ireland herself had 
been contested "only by the very same men who 
to-day have tried to make Ireland the cat's-paw 
of Germany. In all our long and successful 
struggle to obtain Home Rule we have been 
thwarted and opposed by that same section. We 
have won Home Rule not through them, but in 
spite of them. This wicked move of theirs was 
their last blow at Home Rule. It was not half so 

[242] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

much treason to the cause of the Allies as treason 
to the cause of Home Rule. 

"This attempted deadly blow at Home Rule 
carried on through this section," Mr. Redmond 
proceeded, "is made the more wicked and the 
more insolent by this fact, that Germany plotted 
it, Germany organised it, Germany paid for it. 
So far as Germany's share in it is concerned, it 
was a German invasion of Ireland, as brutal, as 
selfish, as cynical as Germany's invasion of Bel- 
gium. Blood has been shed, and if Ireland has 
not been reduced to the same horrors as Belgium, 
with her starving people, her massacred priests, 
her violated convents, it is not the fault of Ger- 
many. And a final aggravation of the movement 
is this. The misguided and insane young men in 
Ireland have risked, and some of them have lost, 
their lives. But what am I to say of those men 
who have sent them into this insane anti-patriotic 
movement while they have remained in the safe 
remoteness of American cities ? I might add that 
this movement has been set in motion by this 
same class of men at the very moment when 
America is demanding reparation for the blood of 
innocent American men and women and children 
shed by Germany, and thus are guilty of double 
treason — treason to the generous land that re- 

[243] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ceived them as well as to the land that gave them 
birth." 

Finally Mr. Redmond expressed his confidence 
as to the final result. "I do not believe that this 
wicked and insane movement will achieve its ends. 
The German plot has failed. The majority of the 
people of Ireland retain their calmness, fortitude 
and unity. They abhor this attack on their in- 
terests, their rights, their hopes, their principles. 
Home Rule has not been destroyed. It remains 
indestructible." 

This statement of Mr. Redmond's was issued 
on May 3rd. On the following day the Chief 
Secretary for Ireland, Mr. Birrell, announced his 
resignation in the House of Commons; and Mr. 
Redmond said that he felt he had incurred some 
share of the blame which Mr. Birrell had laid at 
his own door, because he (Mr. Redmond) had en- 
tirely agreed with Mr. Birrell's view that the dan- 
ger of an outbreak of this kind was not a real one, 
and what he had said might have influenced the 
Chief Secretary in his management of Irish af- 
fairs. Mr. Redmond added that it was the duty 
of the Government to put down the outbreak with 
firmness; but he begged the Government not to 
show undue harshness or severity to the great 
masses of those implicated, on whose shoulders 

[244] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

there lay guilt far different from that which lay- 
on the instigators and promoters. 

A few days later Mr. Redmond called the Gov- 
ernment's attention to the fact that the execu- 
tions of insurgent leaders which had taken place 
in Dublin had produced popular resentment in 
Ireland, and asked that clemency should be ex- 
tended to the other persons involved, in view of 
the precedent set by General Botha in South Af- 
rica, of the complete restoration of order in Ire- 
land, and of the avowed condemnation of the 
movement by the overwhelming majority of the 
people in Ireland. Both publicly and privately Mr. 
Redmond worked hard to secure clemency for the 
leaders of the rising, but he was unable to induce 
the Government to restrain Sir John Maxwell's 
executions until a considerable number had been 
shot. 

At this time a renewed Unionist agitation was 
set on foot for the extension of conscription to 
Ireland. In a debate on an amendment to the 
Military Service Bill with this object Mr. Red- 
mond expressed the profound conviction that, if 
he and his friends had had the power and the re- 
sponsibility of the Government of this country 
during the past two years, when their opinions 
had been overborne and their suggestions rejected 
by the Government, the rising would never have 

[245] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

occurred. With regard to conscription, he 
claimed from every member in the House an ad- 
mission that, in opposing it, he was not animated 
by any desire to prevent getting men for the 
Army, because he had done his best. Ireland, he 
asserted, had done well. She had over 150,000 
with the Colours at the present time who had 
shown a bravery that had covered them with 
glory, and it was an ungenerous thing to attempt 
to taunt Ireland with not having done her duty in 
the war. He was convinced that the worst way 
that could now be attempted to get men was by 
enforcing conscription in Ireland. He had no 
hesitation in saying that, after recent events in 
Ireland, it would in his deliberate opinion be not 
only a wrong thing and an unwise thing, but well- 
nigh an insane thing, to attempt to enforce con- 
scription. 

In the same speech, in response to an over- 
ture from Sir John Lonsdale, an Ulster Unionist 
member, Mr. Redmond declared that "Heaven 
knows, there is no man in this House would be 
more anxious to respond to an appeal from him 
(Sir John Lonsdale) and his friends." "I have 
hoped against hope," said Mr. Redmond at the 
end of his speech, "and I hope still in the dark 
and miserable circumstances of the moment, that 
we may yet come together. Aye, and before very 

[246] 



THE WAR AND REDMOND'S CHOICE 

long I hope with all my heart that out of these 
miseries in Ireland, by taking a large and gener- 
ous view, by taking something like a statesman- 
like view and a far-reaching view of the highest 
interests of the Empire, we may be able out of 
this turmoil and tragedy to evolve some means of 
putting an end to these differences, so that we 
may have a united Ireland and an Ireland where 
the people themselves will have both responsibil- 
ity and the power of Government." The first at- 
tempt to turn the rising to good account by evolv- 
ing an Irish settlement followed immediately 
upon this speech of Mr. Redmond's. 



[247J 



CHAPTER X 



A CLOUDED ENDING 



ON May nth, 1916, after a speech by Mr. 
Dillon in which in vehement language he 
condemned the regime of martial law in Ireland, 
Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, announced his 
intention of proceeding immediately to Ireland 
for the purpose of consulting at first hand with 
the military authorities, and "arriving, if possible, 
at some arrangement for the future which will 
commend itself to the general consent of Irish- 
men of all parties." He remained in Ireland 
about a week, during which time he visited Bel- 
fast and Cork, and conferred with representa- 
tives of various Irish parties, not excluding the 
insurgent prisoners in Dublin. The Prime Min- 
ister reported the result of his Irish mission to 
the House of Commons on May 24th. It had left, 
he said, "two main dominant impressions" on his 
mind. "The first was the break-down of the ex- 
isting machinery of the Irish Government, and 

[248] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

the next was the strength and depth, and I might 
almost say, without exaggeration, the universality 
of the feeling in Ireland that we have now a 
unique opportunity for a new departure for a set- 
tlement of outstanding problems, and for a gen- 
eral and combined effort to obtain agreement as to 
the way in which the government of Ireland 
should in future be carried on." 

There was the most serious prospect that, un- 
less Irish discontent were immediately appeased, 
the whole basis of the relations on which the 
Anglo-Irish quarrel had stood since the days of 
Parnell would be swept away, and that Irish dis- 
content would be diverted back again from con- 
stitutional to revolutionary channels. In all her 
political history Ireland has seen no more re- 
markable revulsion of political opinion than that 
which followed the rising of 191 6, and it was ap- 
parent that the revulsion of feeling could be 
stayed only by an immediate settlement. 

The insurrection, as we have seen, was not ap- 
proved by the great mass of the Irish people. Mr. 
Redmond's outspoken condemnation of it quoted 
in the last chapter was immediately followed by 
resolutions of condemnation from public bodies 
all over Ireland. Nevertheless a very short time 
after the outbreak a large part, perhaps a major- 
ity, of the Irish people gloried in avowing them- 

[24*9] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

selves Sinn Fein. This reaction of Irish senti- 
ment dated from the wholesale executions of in- 
surgent leaders, accompanied by penal servitude 
sentences by the score and arrests and deporta- 
tions by the hundred which followed the insurrec- 
tion and against which Mr. Redmond and his col- 
leagues had protested with their utmost strength. 
The leaders of the rising must in any case, wheth- 
er their enterprise was approved or disapproved, 
have taken a natural place in the popular imag- 
ination in the illustrious succession of Ireland's 
historic "rebels" ; and the "Irish Revival" of Mr. 
Redmond's life-time had contributed powerfully 
towards re-creating the romantic glamour which 
surrounded "the memory of the dead." 

The men of 191 6, therefore, must in any case 
have commanded a certain sentimental sympathy 
in the mass of the Irish people. Probably but for 
their execution that sympathy would have re- 
mained sentimental and no more. But the exac- 
tion from them of the capital penalty for their 
offence at once replaced that appeal to reason on 
which Mr. Redmond based his policy with an 
unmistakable appeal to sentiment. It was 
watched by the Irish people, as a commentator en- 
tirely unsympathetic with the insurrection wrote 
at the time, "with something of the feeling of 
helpless rage with which one would watch a 

[250] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

stream of blood dripping from under a closed 
door." That old suspicion and dislike of the 
British Army as an instrument of oppression 
which the war seemed to have destroyed gained, 
from these events and from certain unfortunate 
incidents connected with the actual suppression of 
the rising, a new lease of bitter life. The insur- 
gent leaders, without any wide public influence in 
their lives, became in their death popular heroes 
and martyrs. The old and deep, but hitherto sub- 
merged, emotions of Nationalist Ireland — sub- 
merged very largely in consequence of Mr. Red- 
mond's leadership — resumed full sway of the na- 
tional imagination and jostled out the novel and 
more superficial emotions induced by the war and 
Ireland's earlier participation in it. Throughout 
the country a wave of emotion swept great num- 
bers of Nationalists into the republican camp. 

This revulsion of feeling naturally grouped it- 
self about the political theory known as Sinn Fein. 
As has been said earlier, Sinn Fein did not make 
the rising; but the rising made Sinn Fein. Before 
the insurrection that political philosophy was 
largely doctrinaire; it could not acquire the char- 
acter of agitation. But now the outbreak had be- 
come loosely associated in the public mind with 
Sinn Fein; the Sinn Fein idea was "in the air"; 
and the revulsion of popular feeling naturally 

[251] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

grouped itself about it. Thus Sinn Fein — though 
in the earlier part of 191 6 still scarcely more than 
a stream of tendency — had become a latent power 
in the land : a power now gravely threatening Mr. 
Redmond's hitherto secure ascendency. 

These were the circumstances in which the new 
effort for a settlement was made. It was obvious 
that its success would stay the drift from consti- 
tutionalism to revolution in Ireland and confirm 
Mr. Redmond's position. It was equally obvious 
that its failure would make the Irish situation 
worse and still further weaken Mr. Redmond's 
position. The effort failed ; and the circumstances 
in which it failed aggravated the detrimental con- 
sequences of its failure. 

The basis on which Mr. Lloyd George was com- 
missioned by the Cabinet to attempt to negotiate 
a settlement was that the Home Rule Act should 
be brought into immediate operation, but that the 
six Ulster counties of Down, Antrim, Derry, Ar- 
magh, Fermanagh, and Tyrone should be exclud- 
ed from its scope. This arrangement was to con- 
tinue for the period of the war and a year after- 
wards, when it should be brought under review 
again. 

The first body in Ireland to deliberate on the 
terms of the proposed settlement — which had 
been conveyed privately to Mr. Redmond and Sir 

[252] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

Edward Carson and were not at this time made 
public except in their broadest outline — was the 
Ulster Unionist Council, which met in Belfast 
under the presidency of Sir Edward Carson on 
June 12th. Contrary to the general expectation 
the Ulster Unionist Council accepted the proposed 
settlement. Its assent was secured largely by the 
aid of a plea of Imperial necessity for an Irish set- 
tlement which Mr. Lloyd George had invoked. 
This was understood to concern the state of Irish- 
American opinion and the safe output and transit 
of munitions of war. The Ulster Unionist Coun- 
cil, however, agreed to the terms proposed on the 
strict understanding that the exclusion of the six 
counties was to be "definite." 

The decision of the Ulster Unionists was fol- 
lowed by a Convention of the Nationalists of Ul- 
ster, held in Belfast on June 23rd. It was by this 
time apparent that any proposal involving the 
"partition" of Ireland was extremely unpopular 
in Nationalist Ireland. A number of public 
bodies had protested against the proposed settle- 
ment. The Roman Catholic Hierarchy in Ulster 
was almost solidly opposed to it. Mr. Redmond, 
however, exerted all his influence to secure assent 
to the contemplated arrangement. The considera- 
tions which influenced him in approaching the 
question of "partition" were discussed at some 

[253] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

length in a preceding chapter in connection with 
the Buckingham Palace Conference. They were 
now more cogent than ever, and Mr. Redmond 
took his political fortunes in both hands in press- 
ing for an immediate settlement in terms of "par- 
tition." 

The Ulster Nationalist Convention was held in 
private ; but it was known that Mr. Redmond gave 
the Convention his assurance that the proposed 
exclusion of the six Ulster counties was to have 
the most definite time-limit set upon it, and that 
he supported his plea for the acceptance of the 
settlement upon these conditions with the state- 
ment that, if the proposals were not accepted, it 
would be the last occasion when he would speak 
upon a public platform as leader of the Irish 
Party. His threat of resignation carried the day. 

The Nationalist Convention had now accepted 
the proposed settlement on the understanding 
that it was to be "temporary and provisional," 
while the Ulster Unionist Council had accepted it 
on the understanding that the exclusion of the six 
counties was to be "definite." It was soon appar- 
ent that this divergence in the interpretation of 
the terms by the two contracting parties was not 
merely a matter of words. The Government's 
promised Bill embodying the proposed settlement 
was not forthcoming. Nationalist opposition to 

[254] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

the scheme of "partition" grew stronger, and 
suspicion of the Government's good faith in the 
matter grew with it. Finally a speech of Lord 
Lansdowne, indicating that the Unionist mem- 
bers of the Cabinet were insisting that the terms 
of the Amending Bill should make it clear that 
the excluded Ulster counties could not be brought 
under Home Rule against their will, and that 
when the Home Rule Act came into operation the 
Irish representation should be reduced, provoked 
an ultimatum from Mr. Redmond. 

In a letter to the Prime Minister and Mr. Lloyd 
George he declared that the long delay in the pro- 
duction of the Government's Bill and the uncer- 
tainty and irritation caused by the speech of Lord 
Lansdowne had created a very serious situation 
in Ireland, and that any further delay would make 
a settlement on the lines laid down in the terms 
submitted by Mr. Lloyd George quite impossible. 
He recalled the fact that he and his colleagues 
"obtained the assent of our friends in Ireland in 
the face of very great difficulties, as the proposed 
terms were far from popular." Finally he an- 
nounced that "any proposal to depart from the 
terms agreed upon, especially in respect of the 
strictly temporary and provisional character of 
all the sections of the Bill, would compel us to 
declare that the agreement, on the faith of which 

[255] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

we obtained the assent of our supporters in Ire- 
land, had been departed from and was at an end." 
On July 24th — two years to a day after the 
break-down of the Buckingham Palace Confer- 
ence — the Prime Minister announced that the 
Government did not propose to introduce a Bill 
in regard to which there did not appear to be a 
prospect of substantial agreement ; and Mr. Red- 
mond, in the subsequent debate, revealed the inner 
history of the negotiations. He said that Mr. 
Lloyd George submitted to Sir Edward Carson 
and himself a series of proposals for a temporary 
and provisional settlement of the Irish question, 
as a war emergency measure, to cover the period 
of the war, and that, after considerable negotia- 
tion and many changes, it was agreed by Sir Ed- 
ward Carson and himself to recommend these 
proposals to their friends. The Nationalist lead- 
ers never concealed from themselves the fact that 
these proposals entailed very great sacrifices on 
the part of their supporters. They felt, however, 
that, as the proposals had been put before them 
as a matter affecting the highest Imperial inter- 
ests, it was their duty not only to Ireland, but to 
the Empire, to obtain the assent of their support- 
ers if possible. The exact words of the agree- 
ment, which was arrived at after considerable 
consultation, was that the Bill was to remain in 

[256] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

force during the continuance of the war, and for 
a period f twelve months afterwards, this period 
to be extended by Order in Council if necessary 
to enable Parliament to make further and perma- 
nent provision for the government of Ireland. 

"None of us," said Mr. Redmond, "desired 
then, and none of us desires now, that any county 
in Ulster which objected to Home Rule should be 
coerced into accepting it. Our hope was that 
the interval would, by sane and tolerant govern- 
ment in the rest of Ireland, show our fellow-coun- 
trymen that their fears were to a great extent 
groundless, and that, after they had fought and 
bled side by side in the war, they would be willing, 
when a permanent settlement was come to, to 
join in the common good of their country. But 
we never contemplated that this great question 
was to be foreclosed and settled now. Another 
fundamental proposal was that, during the transi- 
tory period pending the present settlement, the 
number of Irish members in the Imperial Parlia- 
ment was to remain as at present. That we re- 
garded as an indispensable safeguard of the tem- 
porary character of the arrangement." 

In concluding what he called "this somewhat 
sorry" story Mr. Redmond said that he had actu- 
ally seen the draft of the Bill, which was strictly 
in accordance with the agreement, and that he 

[257] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

was then suddenly informed by the Government 
that it had been decided at a Cabinet Council to 
insert two entirely new provisions, one of which 
provided for the permanent exclusion of the six 
Ulster counties, and the other cut out the pro- 
vision for the retention of the Irish members in 
their full strength at Westminster during the 
transitory period. "I will not bandy words about 
breaches of faith or violation of solemn agree- 
ment," Mr. Redmond concluded, "but I want this 
House and the Government clearly to understand 
that they have entered on a course which is bound 
to increase Irish suspicion of the good faith of 
British statesmen, a course which is bound to in- 
flame feeling in Ireland, and is bound to do seri- 
ous mischief to those high Imperial interests 
which we were told necessitated the provisional 
settlement of this question. Some tragic fatality 
seems to dog the footsteps of this Government in 
all their dealings with Ireland. Every step taken 
by them since the Coalition, and especially since 
the unfortunate outbreak in Dublin, has been la- 
mentable. They have disregarded any advice 
that we have tendered to them, and now in the 
end, having got us to induce our people to make 
the tremendous sacrifice of agreeing to the tem- 
porary exclusion of the six Ulster counties, they 
have thrown this agreement to the winds, and 

[258] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

they have taken the securest means of accentuat- 
ing every possible danger and difficulty in the 
Irish situation." 

Sir Edward Carson afterwards recorded a con- 
versation which he had with Mr. Redmond dur- 
ing the negotiations which issued in this impotent 
conclusion: "Unless we can settle this intermi- 
nable business," said Mr. Redmond, "you and I 
will be dead before anything is done to pacify 
Ireland." The remark was to prove true in his 
own case; and there can be little doubt that the 
failure of this attempt at settlement and the 
weight which it added to his cares contributed 
greatly towards hastening his end. 

The circumstances in which the attempt at set- 
tlement failed did the gravest damage to Mr. 
Redmond's position in Ireland. He incurred all 
the odium of having accepted the unpopular ex- 
pedient of "partition" without gaining any of the 
credit for his courageous attempt to effect a tem- 
porary settlement. Moreover, the circumstances 
in which the attempt failed enabled his critics to 
point the obvious moral of his policy of seeking to 
retain the sympathy and accepting the good faith 
of British politicians. Sir Horace Plunkett, af- 
terwards Chairman of the Convention, expressed 
at this time the opinion that the Government's ac- 
tion "would arouse an opposition which would 

[259] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

drive tens of thousands of moderate men into the 
Sinn Fein camp"; and his prediction was fully 
justified by the event. 

The failure of the attempt at settlement was 
followed by the complete restoration of the sys- 
tem of Castle Government which Mr. Asquith, 
two months before, had described as finally dis- 
credited, and most of the offices in the new Irish 
Executive were filled by Unionists, while Sir John 
Maxwell was retained as Commander-in-Chief 
with the powers of martial law at his command. 
In a speech in Parliament on July 31st, Mr. Red- 
mond, after expressing his feeling that what had 
happened made a peaceful settlement in the end 
absolutely certain, declared that, in the name of 
himself and his colleagues, he must protest 
against this arrangement. It was his party's 
plain duty "to watch and criticise and oppose this 
new administration how and when and where they 
pleased." He added that "in the course of this 
controversy I have not for one moment forgot- 
ten the war. Notwithstanding all that has hap- 
pened, nothing will have the effect of altering my 
view about the war and Ireland's duty towards 
the war." 

In October Mr. Redmond made, in his own con- 
stituency at Waterford, his first appearance at a 
political gathering in Ireland since the rising. He 

[260] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

said that the first fact they must look in the face 
was that a bad blow was struck at the hopes of 
Ireland by the rising in Dublin engineered by 
men who were enemies of the constitutional move- 
ment for Home Rule. The real responsibility 
rested with the British Government, and it was 
idle to suppose that the relations between Ireland 
and the Government could continue as they had 
been before. Mr. Redmond described the Gov- 
ernment's conduct towards Ireland since the war 
began as marked by the most colossal ineptitude, 
want of sympathy, and stupidity, so much so that 
its conduct would have chilled the confidence of 
any people, much less a people like Ireland, whose 
history had taught them how dangerous it was 
to trust English statesmen; and finally the Gov- 
ernment had suppressed the rising with gross and 
panicky violence, and had closed its ears to the 
plea for clemency. Now Dublin Castle was again 
a Tory stronghold, and martial law was in exist- 
ence in every part of the country. "With such 
a Government with such a record," declared Mr. 
Redmond emphatically, "the Irish Nationalist 
representatives can have no relations but those of 
vigorous opposition." 

He proceeded to deal at length with the ques- 
tion of conscription. It would be resisted, he said, 
in every village in Ireland; its attempted enforce- 

[261] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

ment would be a scandal which would ring round 
the civilised world. That way, said Mr. Red- 
mond, lay madness, ruin, and disaster. The way 
to continue to get recruits was far different. 
"Appease the inflamed feelings of the Irish peo- 
ple, withdraw martial law, make it plain that the 
Defence of the Realm Act is to be administered 
in Ireland in the same spirit as in Great Britain, 
treat the prisoners of this unfortunate rising as 
political prisoners, put a stop to the insults and 
attacks upon Ireland, and recognise generously 
and chivalrously all she has done." He added 
that Ireland's attitude so far as the war was con- 
cerned was unchanged, that the Nationalist Party 
would "do nothing calculated to postpone by a 
single instant the victorious end of this conflict," 
and that "I do think it would be a disgrace to Ire- 
land if the Irishmen righting at the front were 
left in the lurch, and if Ireland did not go to their 
assistance." 

The new policy of "open and vigorous opposi- 
tion to the Government on all else beside the war," 
announced by Mr. Redmond in his Water ford 
speech, was quickly put into practice in Parlia- 
ment, where he introduced a resolution "that the 
system of government at present maintained in 
Ireland is inconsistent with the principles for 
which the Allies are fighting in Europe, and is, or 

[262] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

has been, mainly responsible for the recent un- 
happy events, and for the present state of feel- 
ing in that country"; but nothing came of the 
debate. 

The fall of Mr. Asquith's Cabinet and the for- 
mation of Mr. Lloyd George's Administration, 
with its predominance of Unionist Ministers, cre- 
ated in the December of 19 16 great excitement in 
Ireland. Mr. Lloyd George, in outlining the new 
Government's policy on December 19th, made a 
brief reference to Ireland, and said that, while he 
had not yet been able to devote any time to the 
Irish problem, he would consider a settlement as 
a war measure of the first importance and a great 
victory for the Allied cause. Mr. Redmond ex- 
pressed his deep disappointment at the Prime 
Minister's "vague and indefinite" reference to 
Ireland. He asked as a Christmas gift to the 
Irish people that the prisoners of the rising in- 
terned without trial should be released, and said 
that if the Government would take its courage in 
both hands and make a general jail delivery — to 
include the prisoners serving court-martial sen- 
tences of penal servitude — it would be doing more 
to create a better atmosphere and a better feeling 
than anything else it could do. 

Mr. Redmond went on to say that if the Gov- 
ernment intended to deal with the final reconcilia- 

[263] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

tion of Irish opinion by a settlement of the Irish 
question, there were two or three things he would 
like to say. The first was that time was of the 
essence of the matter : the worst thing that could 
happen to the Irish question was that it should be 
allowed to drift further. His next point was that 
the Government should deal with the question 
boldly on its own responsibility and initiative, 
he did not think anything was to be gained by con. 
templating further negotiations. Finally he de- 
clared that the Government must not mix up this 
question with conditions of recruiting or con- 
scription, which must be left to a change of heart 
in Ireland. In conclusion he appealed to the 
Prime Minister, "in Heaven's name let him not 
miss the tide." 

Mr. Redmond's plea of urgency was clearly 
well founded. The interned prisoners were re- 
leased just before Christmas, and with their re- 
lease it quickly became apparent that the senti- 
ment of Sinn Fein was being canalised into a defi- 
nite policy. Sinn Fein clubs began to appear up 
and down the country. Early in 19 17 — in Febru- 
ary — the first opportunity for Sinn Fein to show 
its strength came in the North Roscommon elec- 
tion. This resulted in a victory for the candidate 
of the new movement by a clear majority over 
both the Parliamentary Party's candidate and an 

[264] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

independent candidate, and began the series of 
electoral successes for Sinn Fein which were to 
culminate in Mr. de Valera's sweeping victory in 
East Clare a few months later. But just before 
the Christmas of 19 16 also, an unofficial but in- 
fluential group of Irishmen, mostly with no very 
definite political attachments, began to work, 
under the name of the Irish Conference Commit- 
tee, for a conference of Irish parties in an attempt 
to settle the Irish question by consent. Thus 
emerged two conflicting tendencies which were to 
dominate Irish politics during the following year 
— on the one hand the militant Sinn Fein policy 
irreconcilably opposed to a constitutional settle- 
ment, on the other what may be called by con- 
trast the Convention policy. 

On March 7th, 1917, Mr. T. P. O'Connor 
moved in the House of Commons a resolution to 
the effect "that, with a view to strengthening the 
hands of the Allies in achieving the recognition 
of the equal rights of small nations and the prin- 
ciple of nationality against the opposite German 
principle of military domination and government 
without the consent of the governed, it is essen- 
tial, without further delay, to confer on Ireland 
the free institutions long promised to her." Mr. 
Lloyd George, in his reply, said that the dominant 
consideration in any present settlement must be 

[265] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

its effect on the conduct of the war. There must 
be no attempt at settlement which would provoke 
civil disturbance. The Government was prepared 
to confer self-government on those parts of Ire- 
land which unmistakably demanded it; but they 
were not prepared to coerce North-East Ulster. 

Mr. Redmond solemnly protested against the 
Prime Minister's statement. He asked whether 
the Ulster minority were to have power over tne 
majority for ever. Mr. Lloyd George's state- 
ment, he said, would play right into the hands of 
those who were trying to destroy the constitu- 
tional movement. He admitted that the condition 
of Ireland was very serious, that able men with 
money at their command were bent on smashing 
the constitutional movement. "If the constitu- 
tional movement disappears," he declared, "the 
Prime Minister will find himself face to face with 
the revolutionary movement, and he will have to 
govern Ireland with the naked sword." Finally 
Mr. Redmond called upon his colleagues to with- 
draw as a protest against the Government's atti- 
tude, and the Irish Party thereupon followed him 
out of the House of Commons. 

Subsequently the Party drafted and issued a 
manifesto to the United States and the Domin- 
ions. It declared that the policy of the Govern- 
ment towards Ireland had made the task of carry- 

[266] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

ing on a constitutional movement in Ireland so 
difficult as to be almost impossible. It described 
Mr. Lloyd George's speech as taking up a posi- 
tion which, if adhered to, would involve a denial 
of self-government to Ireland for ever. It con- 
cluded with a special appeal to the American peo- 
ple in general, and the Irish- Americans in particu- 
lar, to "urge upon the British Government the 
duty of applying to Ireland the great principles so 
clearly and splendidly enunciated by President 
Wilson in his historic Address to the Senate of 
America." The United States were at this time 
just entering the war; and the possible effect of 
the Irish Party's strongly worded appeal to Irish- 
Americans was doubtless not the least cogent of 
the considerations which on March 22nd impelled 
the Government to announce through the mouth 
of Mr. Bonar Law, that it had decided to make, 
on its own responsibility, another attempt at an 
Irish settlement. 

The Government's proposal, or rather propos- 
als, was contained in a circular letter of May 
16th addressed by the Prime Minister to Mr. 
Redmond in common with the other Irish party 
leaders. The Government proposed, in the first 
place, the immediate application of the Home 
Rule Act to Ireland, excluding the six north- 
eastern counties of Ulster, this arrangement to 

[267] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

be subject to reconsideration by Parliament at the 
end of five years; in the meantime the establish- 
ment of a Council of Ireland, composed of mem- 
bers of Parliament of the excluded area and an 
equal delegation from the Irish Parliament, with 
powers to pass legislation affecting the whole of 
Ireland; and a reconsideration of the financial 
clauses of the Act. 

This thinly disguised scheme of "partition" was 
certain of rejection by the Irish Party. For the 
moment at least the opportunity for a settlement 
on that basis had passed. The Sinn Fein candi- 
date had just won South Longford from the Par- 
liamentary Party's candidate by a very narrow 
majority, obtained on the strength of an allega- 
tion by Archbishop Walsh of Dublin that the 
country was "practically sold" into "partition." 
Mr. Redmond replied to the Prime Minister that 
his proposals had been carefully considered by 
himself and his colleagues, and that "the first pro- 
posal would, in their opinion, find no support in 
Ireland, and they desire me to inform you that 
they are irreconcilably opposed to this scheme, 
and that any measure based on it will meet with 
their vigorous opposition." 

The Prime Minister's alternative proposal, in 
resort as it were to an expedient almost of des- 
peration, was the plan of a Convention, which, in 

[268] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

default of the acceptance of its first proposal, the 
Government declared itself prepared to take the 
necessary steps to assemble. This alternative 
Mr. Redmond described and accepted. His ac- 
ceptance of the Convention plan was wholly con- 
sistent with the tendency of his entire political 
career. It followed naturally from his participa- 
tion in the Recess Committee which had led to the 
creation of the Irish Department of Agriculture, 
and his share in the Land Conference which se- 
cured the passage of the Wyndham Land Act. It 
accorded with his political principle that Irishmen 
in council were the proper and only competent 
body for the settlement of Irish questions. It was 
largely his own leadership of the Irish Party 
which made possible the assembly of such a body 
as the Irish Convention, and that leadership and 
its attitude within the Convention which made 
possible such a measure of agreement as that body 
was to reach. 

In announcing, on June nth, the constitution 
of the Convention, the Prime Minister referred to 
the death of Mr. Redmond's brother, Major "Wil- 
lie" Redmond, who a few days before had been 
killed in action at Messines. He recalled Major 
Redmond's last appeal in Parliament: "While 
English and Irish soldiers are dying side by side, 
must the eternal conflict between the two coun- 

[269] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

tries go on? In the name of God, we here, who 
are perhaps about to die, ask you to do that which 
largely induced us to leave our homes ; that which 
our fathers and mothers taught us to long for; 
that which is all we desire to make our country 
happy and contented." Mr. Lloyd George re- 
called also the fact that Major Redmond was 
"carried tenderly and reverently from the field by 
Ulster soldiers in an Ulster ambulance," and 
pointed to the circumstances of his death as pro- 
viding an inspiration for the work of the Con- 
vention. 

But the death of his brother, which was very 
deeply felt by Mr. Redmond, was to do some- 
thing else besides provide an inspiration for the 
work of the Convention. It was to provide the 
occasion for the event which, even while the Con- 
vention was assembling, was at once to disclose 
the full strength of Sinn Fein in Ireland and con- 
firm its hold on the popular imagination — the 
East Clare election. In view of the Convention 
the Government had declared a general amnesty. 
Mr. de Valera, the most prominent of the impris- 
oned insurgents, who had been a commandant in 
Dublin during the rising, was at once adopted as 
Sinn Fein candidate for the seat left vacant by 
Major Redmond's death. The Sinn Fein leader 
was elected in Major Redmond's room by an enor- 

[270] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

mous majority. It was under the shadow of this 
significant event that the Convention assembled 
in Dublin in the Regent House of Trinity College 
on July 25th, 1917. 

The Convention represented, in effect, a final 
attempt to stay the swift transition from a con- 
stitutional Ireland to a revolutionary Ireland. Its 
chances of success depended on the formation of 
a strong Centre Party, standing between the 
Orange extremists at one end and the Sinn Fein 
extremists at the other. So far as Unionist Ul- 
ster was concerned, if its assent to Home Rule 
could not be won by liberal concessions, the best 
issue to be expected, calculated in the long run to 
secure the same result, was such a measure of 
agreement among all the other parties and the 
non-party interests represented in the Conven- 
tion as would put the "old guard" of Ulster 
Unionism in a position of complete moral isola- 
tion. 

It was to such an issue to the Convention that 
Mr. Redmond devoted the closing months of his 
life. He was elected a member of the Grand 
Committee of twenty members appointed on Sep- 
tember 27th, "to prepare a scheme for submis- 
sion to the Convention which would meet the 
views and difficulties expressed by the various 
speakers" during the preliminary debate, and 

[271] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

shared in the drafting of what was called the 
"Midleton compromise" put before the full Con- 
vention on its reassembly on December 18th to 
receive the Grand Committee's report. This 
scheme, for which Lord Midleton, the leader of 
the Southern Unionist delegation, was chiefly re- 
sponsible, was thus described in the final Report 
of the Convention drafted by its Chairman, Sir 
Horace Plunkett. "It accepted self-government 
for Ireland. In return for special minority repre- 
sentation in the Irish Parliament, already con- 
ceded by the Nationalists, it offered to that Par- 
liament complete power over internal legislation 
and t administration; and, in matters of finance, 
over direct taxation and Excise. But, although 
they agreed that the Customs revenue should be 
paid into the Irish Exchequer, the Southern 
Unionists insisted upon the permanent reserva- 
tion to the Imperial Parliament of the power to 
fix the rate of Customs duties. By far the greater 
part of our time and attention was occupied by 
this one question, whether the imposition of Cus- 
toms duties should or should not be under the con- 
trol of the Irish Parliament." 

Mr. Redmond, who had taken the leading part 
in offering such concessions as special minority 
representation to the Unionists, strove his hard- 
est to effect a compromise on this vital question 

[272] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

of Customs. He felt that nothing effective could 
result from the work of the Convention unless 
some understanding was reached upon Customs 
which would render an agreement on a complete 
scheme obtainable. Accordingly he was willing 
to agree, in order that a Parliament should be at 
once established, to postpone a legislative decision 
upon the ultimate control of Customs and Excise. 
This compromise was accepted by all the South- 
ern Unionists, five of the seven Labour delegates, 
and most of the non-party representatives; and 
laid, in the Chairman's words, "a foundation of 
Irish agreement unprecedented in history." It 
was opposed, however, by a strong Nationalist 
minority, headed by Mr. Devlin, and including 
three of the four Roman Catholic Bishops in 
the Convention. These held that, without sepa- 
rate Customs and Excise, Ireland would fail to at- 
tain a national status like that enjoyed by the 
Dominions, and that, in the present state of Irish 
opinion, without Customs no scheme the Conven- 
tion recommended would receive sufficient popu- 
lar support to be effective. 

The failure to induce this strong Nationalist 
minority to accept the Midleton compromise, and 
thereby to secure the complete agreement of all 
sections except the Ulster Unionists, was a bitter 
disappointment to Mr. Redmond. He returned 

[273] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

to London in the early spring of 191 8 a broken 
man, and took no part in the final meetings of the 
Convention. Perhaps mercifully, he did not live 
to see the Convention's Report finally presented 
with such an incomplete measure of agreement as 
had been reached, and even that outcome of its 
labours promptly wrecked by the Government's 
sudden decision to apply conscription to Ireland, 
a policy which for the time being almost wholly 
submerged the constitutional movement in whose 
service he had spent his life. 

John Redmond died in London on March 6th, 
19 18, and was buried in Wexford in the family 
burial-ground at the end of the week. Upon the 
news of his death the Convention, then in session 
adjourned out of respect for his memory until 
after the funeral, passing first a resolution which 
declared that he "was valued by all as a great 
Irishman, a brilliant Parliamentarian, an honour- 
able opponent, a kindly friend, a genial and warm- 
hearted comrade." It was an apt epitome of the 
character of the Irish leader whose own last 
words, quoted by the Prime Minister in his trib- 
ute to Mr. Redmond's memory in Parliament, 
were, indeed, a summary of his whole political 
life — "a plea for concord between the two races 
that Providence has designed should work as 
neighbours together." 

[274] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

In retrospect one sees the dominant purpose of 
his political life emerging from his career as a 
recurrent motif of gathering force. The Recess 
Committee; the Land Conference; the Conven- 
tion, that last chance of recovering the lost and 
misused opportunity which the war created — in 
these episodes most unmistakably the purpose 
grows and broadens. To widen the happy ac- 
cord on the most impracticable of all Irish dis- 
orders, the agrarian, into a concordat of Cath- 
olic and Protestant in the same spirit of generous 
toleration among Irishmen that was the glory of 
Grattan's Parliament and of Wolfe Tone's Unit- 
ed Irishmen ; to combine, by the same triumphant 
process of consent that had extinguished land- 
lordism all Irish ranks and creeds for the estab- 
lishment of Home Rule : such was his endeavour. 

Such was the endeavour for which the war of- 
fered the crowning opportunity. If that oppor- 
tunity was wasted, the main fault was not John 
Redmond's. How far did he fail through falli- 
bility of judgment of his own ; how far through 
the active opposition of the forces which desired 
strife where he desired peace or the deadline vis 
inertiae of the human material which he sought 
to mould; how far through the working of that 
incalculable mischance which steadily mocks the 

[275] 



THE LIFE OF JOHN REDMOND 

best efforts of Irish leaders? One cannot as yet 
gain a fair historical perspective for distributing 
the responsibility among these various factors: 
all of them in some measure contributed to the 
ending of his life-work in disappointment and 
defeat. 

But against the immediate background of un- 
toward circumstance stands out the fine figure of 
a great Irish gentleman who played for a high 
stake gallantly, and lost without dishonour. We 
recall the fact that his great Parliamentary pre- 
decessors of the nineteenth century, Daniel 
O'Connell, Isaac Butt, Charles Stewart Parnell, 
lost before they died, as John Redmond did, the 
"confidence" of a majority of their people. We 
know, however, that, even among the Irish them- 
selves, the reputations of O'Connell, Butt and 
Parnell have not been lessened by that fact. The 
crown of romance adorns their memories. And 
however the Irish at home may feel at the mo- 
ment, there is no doubt that the Irish in England, 
in America, in the British Dominions stand by 
the principles for which John Redmond lived and 
died. There is still a prospect that his policy may 
be triumphantly vindicated in all its aspects. It 
may still be shown that, judged merely by the 
worldly test of practical results, he was successful 

[276] 



A CLOUDED ENDING 

beyond all those who have sought to serve Ire- 
land. It is sure at all events that John Redmond's 
life work is no more wasted than the life work 
of Parnell and O'Connell; for nothing that is sin- 
cere and loyal is lost. 



THE END 



INDEX 



All-for-Ireland League. 

See O'Brien, William. 
America, Redmond's visits 

to, 68-69, 90, 96, 102, 

129, 130, 185. 
America and Home Rule, 

144-147, 242-245, 255, 

265-268, 276. 
Anglicisation, Redmond and, 

43, 181, 244. 
Asquith, H. H., 85-86, 117- 

118, 123, 134, 194, 199, 

204, 232, 284, 263. 
Aughavanagh, ^y, 39, 132. 
Australia, Redmond's visit 

to, 68-70, 185. 

Bachelor's Walk, 209-14. 
Balfour, A. J., 40, 70, 71, 

102, 103. 
Balfour, Gerald, 87, 88. 
Belgium, Ireland and, 221- 

23. 

Biggar, J., 50. 

Birrell, Augustine, III, 128, 
169, 218, 244 

Boer War, 89, 91, 193, 105- 
106. 

Boulogne negotiations, 76- 
78. 

Bryce, Lord, III. 

Buckingham Palace Confer- 
ence. See King. 

Budget (1909), H5> 120, 
et seq. 

Burke, 40, 182. 



Butt, Isaac, xvii-xx, 50-51, 
62-63, 69, 276. 

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir 

Henry, 105, no, 117. 
Carson, Sir Edward, 149, 

190, 203-208, 221, 231- 

2 33, 253-254, 256 259. 
Casement, Roger, 152, 201, 

218. 
Catholic emancipation, x-xv. 
Catholicism, Redmond and, 

32, 40-43, 47, 53, 81, 107, 

109, 1 14-15* 135, 139, 

157-158. 
Churchill, Winston, 132, 

147, 190. 
Clan-na-Gael, 59, 63n, 239. 
Clarke, Thomas, 86. 
Clongowes, 51-54, 68. 
Coalition Government 

(First), 171; (Second), 

232, 262. 
Committee Room XV., 74, JJ. 
Congested Districts Board, 

180. 
Connolly, James, 155, 239. 
Conscription, 234, 245-247, 

261-265, 273. 
Convention, Irish, 206, 256- 

, 2 74- 
Co-operative movement. See 

Plunkett. 
Crook, W. H., 37, 55, 184. 
"Curragh Mutiny," 194-195, 

196, 197, 201, 212, 231. 



[279] 



INDEX 



Davitt, Michael, xix, 41, 
62-63, 94, 97, 101. 

Department of Agriculture, 
88, 180, 269. 

"Departure, New," xix. 

De Valera, 265, 270. 

Devoy, xix, 6311. 

Devlin, Joseph, 131, 150, 157, 
192, 273. 

Devolution, 102, 110-121. 

Dillon, John, 57, 62, 76, 86, 
89-90, 97-102, 181, 200- 
204, 233-235, 241, 248. 

"Dollar Dictator," 130. 

Dublin Castle, 139, 261. 

Dunraven, Lord, 100-102. 

Edward VII., King, and 
Lords' Veto, 124. 

death, 127. 
Emmet, Robert, 

insurrection of, xii. 

Federalism, Butt and, xvii, 
62. 

Fenians, xvi, 49, 60, 68, 169. 

Fenian rising, xvi, xix, 175. 

Finance of Home Rule, 136, 
141. 

Financial relations, Commis- 
sion on, 89. 

France, Ireland and, 222. 

Freeman's Journal, 98, 131. 

General election (1895), 
84. 
(1900), 90, 92. 
(1906), 107. 

(1910), 118, 119, 122, 129. 
George V., King, and con- 
stitutional crisis, 127, 130. 
Home Rule, 203-205, 253, 
255- 



George, D. Lloyd, 204, 228, 

252, 255, 256, 263, 270. 
"George I., Sixth of," viii. 
Germany and Ireland, 32, 33, 

145-146, 197, 239, 242- 

244. 
Gladstone, xvi, 64, 66, 69, 70, 

73, 82, 84, 173- 
Gough, General, 193-194. 
Grattan, x, xiii, 40, 41. 
Grattan's Parliament, ix. x, 

139- 

Green, Mrs. Max. See Red- 
mond. 

Green, Mrs. J. R., 198. 

Grey, Sir Edward, 92, 125, 
145, 215. 

Griffith, Arthur, 171, et seq., 
218. 

Gwynn, Stephen, 37. 

Harrington, T. C, 81, 96. 
Healy, T. M., 56, 57, 72, 74, 

87, 121, 129, 170. 
Hibernians, Ancient Order 

of. See Devlin. 
Home Rule Bill (1886), 69, 

135. 137, 142, 173- 
(1893), 70, 82, 135, 142. 
(1912), passim, 131-221. 
Home Rule Act, passim, 221- 

276. 
Howard-Redmond, L. G., 25, 

42, 185. 
Hungary and Ireland. See 
Griffith. 

Imperialism, Redmond and, 
61, 70, 143, 144, 184-186, 
246, 256-259. 

Insurance Act, 131. 

Irish Council Bill. See Dev- 
olution. 



[280] 



INDEX 



Irish Division, 231. 
Irish Independent, 156. 
Irish Revival, 43, 178, 182, 
187, 250. 

Jesuits, 53. 

Jones, Harry, 126, 128-130. 

Kane, Father (of Clon- 

gowes), 52-53. 
Kettle, Lawrence, 151, 202. 
Kettle, T. M., 5m., 151. 
Kelly, Rt. Rev. Dr., 37. 
King's Inn, Dublin, 55, 69. 
Kitchener, Lord, 230. 

Labour Party, Irish Party 

and, 105, 117, 122. 
Land Act (1881), 65, 180. 
(1893), 94, 100, 105, no, 

179. 
(1909), 107, no, 179. 
Land Conference, 96, HO, 

269, 275. 
Land League, xviii, 49, 50, 

62, 63, 65, 67, 72, 106, 119. 
Land League of America, 59. 
Land Reform, Redmond 

and, 41, 62-63, 89, 94, et 

seq. 
Lansdowne, Lord, 188, 204, 

255. 

Larkin, James, 156, 157, 239. 

Larne, gun-running at, 197- 
203, 210-211, 231. 

Law, Bonar, 204, 221, 232, 
267. 

Law, Hugh, 33n, 36, 38. 

Leamy, Edmond, 37, 74, 81. 

Lecky, 122. 

Local Government Act (Ire- 
land), 88, 180. 

Long, Walter, 103-194. 



MacCarthy, Justin, 75, 86. 
MacDonnell, Lord, 99, in. 
MacNeill, John, 151, 152, 

155, 202. 
Maxwell, Sir John, 227, 230, 

245, 260. 
Midleton, Lord, 272-274. 
Mitchel, John, xv. 
Moore, George Henry, 50. 
Moore, Colonel, 50m, 151, 

228, 229. 
Morley, Lord, 73, 74, 130. 
Murphy, W. M., 156, 158. 

National University, 54, 
102, 108, 120, 180. 

O'Brien, Patrick, 36. 

O'Brien, William, 72, 76-77, 
87, 89, 94-96, 97-102, 
119, 129, 176. 

Obstruction, Parnell's meth- 
ods of, 27, 64. 

O'Connell, xiii-xv, xvii, 276. 

O'Connor, T. P., 41, 57, 64- 
66, 72, 119, 265. 

O'Grady, Standish, 180. 

O'Leary, xviii. 

Orator, Redmond as, 160 et 
seq. 

O'Shea, Captain, 72. 

Pale, English, viii, 35. 

Parnell, xviii-xix, 26-30, 33- 
36, 46, 56-65, 67, 72-76, 
80, 90-94, 132-135, 168, 
170, 232, 249, 276. 

Parnell. Mrs., 79. 

"Partition," Redmond and, 
205-208, 253-255, 268. 

Pearse. Patrick, 152. 

Phoenix Park murders, 66- 
68, 71. 



[281] 



INDEX 



Plunkett, Sir Horace, 87, 
180, 207, 259, 272. 

Protection, Home Rule and, 
142. 

"Poyning's Law," viii. 

Raymond le Gros, 44-47. 
Rebellion of 1798, vii, xi, 32, 

152, 168. 
of 1916, 187, 205, 223, 228, 

235, 238-252, 260. 
Recess Committee, 60, 88, 

269. 
Recruiting, Redmond and, 

30, 221, 222, 224, 225, 

228-231, 236, 261-263. 
Redmond, Father John, 48. 
Redmond, John, passim. 
Redmond, Johanna, 34. 
Redmond, William Archer 
(father of John Red- 
mond), xviii, 45, 48, 52, 

56. 
Redmond, William, 34, 45, 

48, 51, 67, 68, 73, 80, 

270-1. 
Renunciation, Act of, ix, 173. 
Repeal, movement for, xiii- 

xv, xvii. 
Republican Brotherhood, 

Irish, 176, 239. 
Roberts, Lord, 200. 
Rosebery, Lord, 83, 84, 85, 92. 

Seely, Colonel, 229. 

Sexton, Thomas, 57, 74. 

Separation, Redmond and, 
29, 30, 61, 69, 118, 123, 
132, 134, 168, 184. 

Sinn Fein, 27, 29, 31, 38, 39, 
122, 152, 165-188, 218, 
234, 238, 250-252, 264, 
270-272. 



Smith, F. E. See Birken- 
head. 

Spender, Harold, 33m, 37, 
41. 

Sportsman, Redmond as, 39. 

Stead, W. T., in, 184. 

Stephens, James, xvi. 

Syndicalism, 168. 

Theatre, Irish National, 42- 

43, 180. 
Trinity College, Dublin, 54, 

55, 108, 109. 

Ulster Division, 230-233. 
Ulster Unionist Movement, 

29 et seq., 147, passim, 

190-233. 
Ulster Covenant, 147-148. 
Union, Act of, vii, ix, xii, 

144. 
United Irishmen, 48. 
United Irish League, 87, 89, 94. 
of America, 128. 

Veto, House of Lords', 116 
et seq. 

Victoria, Queen, visit to 
Ireland, 92. 

Volunteers, Irish (1779), x, 
xi, 216, 226, 234, 239. 
National, 151-155, 196-198, 
200-203, 209, 212, 219- 
220, 224, 228, 234, 239. 
Ulster. See Ulster Union- 
ist Movement. 

Waterford, Redmond's seat 

at, 34, 81, 119, 260. 
Wilson, President, 267. 
Wyndham, George, 95, 98, 
99, 102. 

Young Ireland, xv, 49, 174. 



[382] 



